


Heavy Dirty Soul

by alexjosten



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Divergence, Drunk Kissing, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Kevin Day is a fuckboy, M/M, POV Kevin Day, Panic Attacks, andrew being petty AF, blink and you miss it onesided andreil, powerbottom neil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:42:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexjosten/pseuds/alexjosten
Summary: Andrew doesn't believe Neil when he explains he has a binder full of Kevin's photos because he's in love with him. To catch him in his lie, he convinces Kevin to fake interest in Neil to get him to give up the act. Problem is, neither of them know how far Neil is willing to go to ensure his survival.





	1. The Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started off as a "KevinNeil fake dating" prompt from an anonymous person on Tumblr. I decided to theory-craft a few ideas to figure out how the two of them would wind up in a fake dating scenario, and then this happened. Enjoy.
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Blood mention and a short PTSD episode.

“Kevin, Kevin, Kevin,” Andrew practically sang as he returned to the dorm room. “Have I got news for you.”

Kevin shot Andrew a miserable look from where he was slouched in the beanbag chair, still nursing his hangover and his regret from being an accomplice last night. Andrew’s plan of slipping cracker dust to Neil at Eden’s had clearly been a mistake, considering it was enough to scare off his new striker sub entirely. After spending the entire spring season looking through files and visiting schools to scout countless disappointing potential recruits, and then losing Janie Smalls the way they did, they couldn’t afford to start at square one again this late in the year. When they had gotten back to the dorm and Matt revealed Neil still hadn’t returned, Kevin resigned himself to accepting they might just have to play the rest of the season without a sub.

Aaron ignored his twin’s return to the dorm, having not moved an inch from his hungover burrito of alcohol-induced regret since Andrew’s phone went off an hour ago. Wymack’s fury had boomed out of the tinny speaker loud enough to be heard by all four men in the room, but only Andrew had been called in to face his ire. Nicky was the only one who seemed to be interested in Andrew’s return, as he peeked over the back of the couch curiously.

“What did Coach say?”

“Something something don’t have a repeat of last year,” Andrew waved his hand with disinterest. “Oh, and Neil is back.”

“He is?” Nicky perked up and while relief washed over his features, it didn’t do much to wipe the guilt away. “Is he okay? How did he get back here?”

Andrew shrugged and fished out his cigarettes, tapping one out of the packet. “Don’t care, to both questions. Go ask him yourself. Now get out. I need to speak to Kevin alone.”

Aaron shot Andrew a disgruntled look, but slowly got up anyway. Kevin figured in his hungover state that he didn’t have the energy to argue with his twin, considering how much effort it normally took. From the bounce in his step, Nicky seemed a bit more enthusiastic about being kicked out of the room, if only because he had been given explicit permission to go be nosy on the new kid.

Once the lock clicked shut behind them, Andrew perched himself on the desk and nudged open the window so he could light up. Kevin wrinkled his nose at him in distaste, but couldn’t seem to muster the energy to move from his slumped position, even with the knowledge that his substitute was at least alive and back at Palmetto. By now, he knew better than to get too optimistic when Andrew was pleased about news he had to share.

“So I just had an interesting little chit chat with Neil,” Andrew paused to blow a plume of smoke from his lips, openly savouring the moment before dropping his bomb. “His little obsession with you goes beyond your Exy accolades. Apparently he’s in love with you.”

Kevin barked out a short laugh—because how else could he take that statement other than a joke? Neil had looked at him with nothing but bitter contempt all summer during their rigorous training sessions. It hadn’t even been that long since he broke into his dorm to call him a cripple and a deadweight has-been.

“I find that hard to believe,” he pointed out, “I practically strangled him the other day.”

A grin twisted onto Andrew’s mouth as he held his cigarette out to the side. “Maybe he’s into that.”

“Fuck you. You’re full of shit.”

“Do I lie?” Andrew prompted, and Kevin fell silent.

Other than sometimes trading places with Aaron, Kevin knew that Andrew didn’t usually try to deliberately deceive others. Often he would omit information, which Kevin found annoying, and occasionally for his own amusement, Andrew would venture into a fabrication so outrageous that nobody could possibly mistake it for truth. Kevin would have been tempted to believe Andrew’s announcement fell into the latter category had he not kicked out Aaron and Nicky. He usually enjoyed an audience for his more bizarre lies.

“So you’re telling me that you went to Wymack’s, got reamed out for drugging and losing Neil, and then he just waltzed in and had a heart to heart with you? Okay. Sure.”

“Essentially.” Andrew drummed his fingers on his knee and took a long drag of his cigarette. Kevin had learned to interpret this type of pause as Andrew live-editing what he was about to say next, choosing what to omit and which cards to show. It frustrated him that he was withholding information about their newest teammate, but the only way he’d learn more was by staying silent and waiting for Andrew to finish.

“He was boo-hoo’ing about the dust last night and wanted to know why we,” Andrew made air quotes, “‘drugged him out of his mind’. I said I wanted an answer about his little binder.”

Hearing about Neil’s binder had been another moment Kevin had questioned Andrew’s honesty, but it had been so borderline creepy that it just didn’t suit Andrew’s modus operandi for cruel jokes. Apparently it was stuffed full of several year’s worth of newspaper clippings and photographs of Kevin and Riko. Kevin hadn’t seen it himself, but Andrew described it as looking like a cross between a lovesick schoolgirl’s journal and a hitman’s shitlist. Andrew had speculated that Neil was either a stalker, or a mole from Edgar Allan come to fuck with Kevin’s recovery.

As soon as Riko had been mentioned, Kevin had agonised over it for days. He kept his distance and acted extra cold towards Neil to discourage him either way. Ironically, Riko ended up also being the only reason Kevin was able to calm down and convince himself Neil couldn’t be a mole. There was no reason for a mole to have clippings and photos of Riko in his notes if he worked for him. Neil had to just be an overzealous exy fan, and an admirer’s obsession was a lot more familiar to deal with.

“What did he say?”

Andrew smoked to pause and edit again.

“He said a lot of things that don’t concern you.” That was his way of flaunting that he had information he wouldn’t share, and Kevin bristled. “But those things have led me to believe he’s not a threat to you anymore.”

“And those things included him saying he’s in love with me.” Kevin felt ridiculous saying it out loud.

“I’m paraphrasing, but yes. He waxed on about how he’s jealous of you but he can’t bear to be away from you. He begged me to let him stay. It was over the top.”

“So you don’t believe him,” Kevin extrapolated.

Andrew paused to take a drag from his cigarette and collect his thoughts. “He’s definitely still hiding something and I don’t like not knowing what kind of plague little rodents are bringing in to our home. I want to catch him in his lie to find out what he’s trying to cover up. He won’t slip up in front of me now, but you’ll be different.”

Kevin didn’t like the direction this was taking. Andrew’s plans usually weren’t pleasant for anyone involved, including himself.

“What do you mean?”

“The sooner he drops the pretense that he’s into you, the sooner I can finish interrogating him,” Andrew explained carefully, his tone bordering patronising as if he was speaking to a five year old, “And since your usual _delightful_ self hasn’t scared him off yet, we need to try a different tactic. Make him believe you’re into him. I guarantee you he’ll get spooked the second you try holding his hand and he’ll give up the entire charade.”

The plan was so stupid that Kevin wondered if Andrew was high. He actually checked his pockets to see if he still had Andrew’s meds and he produced the small orange pill bottle a second later. Andrew hadn’t taken a dose since last night, so he had to be stone cold sober.

“He’s not an idiot. We’ve hardly spoken a word to each other off the court, how the hell do you expect me to convince him that I’m into him?”

“Look Kevin,” Andrew hooked an ankle over his knee and leaned forward, pushing the heated cherry of his cigarette towards Kevin’s face. He recoiled back and glowered at him. “You’ve been pestering me to let this kid join you during night practices for the past month. I’m telling you, you can now. You now have regular one on one time with him to make him believe it. Be nice to him, flirt with him in the locker room, I don’t care. Talk about Exy, since that’s clearly what gets both of you off. Just make it happen.”

“I’m not gay,” Kevin retorted, a knee jerk response, “As an athlete in the public eye, it’s—” Kevin’s speech quickly dissolved into swearing as Andrew ashed his cigarette on his shirt.

“I never said you were. And it will be over before it even begins. He is definitely lying,” Andrew leaned back and observed his cigarette with a bored gaze, and then belatedly added, “In the unlikely circumstance that I am wrong, you end it, or I will do it for you.”

Kevin scowled at his ash-stained shirt as he thought over Andrew’s terms. If he refused, Andrew had no reason to agree to bring Neil to his evening training sessions. Kevin had been fighting him on it nearly every night since Neil arrived on campus. Their newest recruit had so much potential and it was being squandered during their group trainings. He knew if he could just run him through some Ravens’ drills he could actually make something of him. If he could start coaching him now, maybe they would even stand a chance before their first official match as a team.

If he was lucky, Kevin might even be able to get Neil on the starting line-up and have an alternative to running Seth all the time. Even with his lack of skill, Neil played like his life was on the line, while Seth was more interested in brawling with Kevin than practicing. While Neil’s attitude towards Kevin so far made Andrew’s claim that Neil had feelings for him sound ridiculous, Kevin couldn’t deny the fact that if he attempted to make an effort to be kinder towards Neil, it could potentially result in better teamwork. And if Andrew was right, which he usually was, it wouldn’t even get as far as flirting or anything else he thought Andrew might be alluding to.

If it went to plan, it was a win-win. More training time, improved team cohesion, and possibly Andrew would figure out what Neil was hiding on the side. Kevin didn’t really care what it was, as long as Neil gave his game to him.

“I don’t like this,” Kevin felt the need to reiterate, and he threw the pill bottle at Andrew’s head. The goalkeeper caught it without blinking, and Kevin begrudgingly concluded, “But fine.”

\-----

Catching Neil on his own to invite him to the evening practices ended up being more difficult than he had originally anticipated. He tried knocking on his dorm a couple of times, but was blocked at each attempt by Neil’s roommates. Matt was naturally protective of Neil after their little stunt in the hallway and Eden’s, while Seth delighted in any opportunity to be antagonistic and uncooperative. Kevin eventually had to corner Neil after practice once everyone else had changed out and left. Considering how difficult it was to get facetime to speak to him (if speaking to him through the closed shower stall door even counted), Neil agreed to the invitation surprisingly easily. He preferred to chalk it down to Neil’s passion for Exy, and not his fabricated infatuation with him.

Finally starting Neil on the Ravens’ drills was unexpectedly taxing on his resolve. With Andrew always refusing to join him on the court at night, it was his first time since leaving Edgar Allan that he had run any of the exercises with someone else. Kevin had been making an active effort to quell his usual impatience with him after Andrew’s suggestion to be ‘nice’ to him, but it was difficult to keep his cool when the rookie striker could only hit one out of six cones. If they had been in the Nest, his incompetence would have been punished severely by now, but instead Neil just seemed pleased with himself that he was managing to keep up with Kevin’s right hand.

Neil’s eagerness to settle for mediocrity made him boil inside. Out of frustration, and against his better judgement, Kevin switched back to his dominant hand to show Neil how it was done. He wanted to illustrate how large of a skill gap Neil needed to overcome. After he had hit his sixth consecutive cone, he looked up to see Neil slack jawed and hungry with incentive. His ego preened with pride until Neil spoke.

“I want that,” Neil said.

Kevin was abruptly pulled out of the context of Exy as he wondered if there was more to what Neil meant. Did he just want his skill? Or something more? Was he twisting his words too much, reading between lines that didn’t exist?

He shook himself out of it and started lining up the cones again to keep his head in the game. His challenge felt ambiguous on his tongue when he replied, “Then start really trying.”

The nighttime practices dissolved the additional tension that had settled between Neil and Kevin since the Eden’s trip. Kevin’s investment in helping Neil improve returned in the form of his harsh criticism during the morning practices, and Neil was more receptive than ever, even if he wasn’t exactly subtle about what he thought of Kevin’s poor delivery. That fire was a preferable warmth to the cold distance that had wedged the two apart before, but it brought along an unexpected layer of uncertainty for Kevin. Even though Nicky wasn’t aware of Andrew’s latest scheme, he often shot meaningful looks between the two strikers. It was enough to make Kevin paranoid that he was giving Neil too much attention already. It made him begin to question and second-guess everything he did and said.

It led to him acting inconsistently, ignoring Neil in front of their team but indulging his questions when they were alone on the court at night, with only Andrew as their distant witness. As the evening sessions became routine, Kevin started to relax around Neil, worrying less about his interactions with him and just accepting them as they were.

Either way, Neil didn’t seem to be acting any different, other than showing encouraging progress on the court and acting slightly less hostile during the day. He didn’t seem to show any additional interest in Kevin despite his attempts to be friendly, and Kevin thought less and less about his binder or Neil’s dubious desire for him. After years of compartmentalising in the Nest, it was easy for Kevin to pretend something Andrew had only described to him wasn’t real. It was a bad habit he hadn’t quite outgrown yet.

He spent nearly two months training Neil in the evenings without incident, so by the time the first game of the season arrived, he had almost entirely forgotten why Andrew had allowed it in the first place. That, combined with his own anxiety about debuting as a right-handed player, he hadn’t afforded much thought to Andrew’s plan at all. But then the morning of their game against Breckenridge came, and the ERC revealed Neil Josten’s identity as the new substitute striker for the Palmetto Foxes.

Suddenly Neil’s name was _everywhere_. Magazine and newspaper headings, sports channels, radio stations, every Exy news site and blog online and on the lips of every student on campus. And without failure his name was always paired with interview quotes from Kevin. It ranged from his praise of his skills, his high expectations for him as a player, to his bold claims that Neil would make Court. Kevin had gone into autopilot sports PR mode when the microphones had been shoved in his face, and on paper they were all the correct things to say. But when he caught Neil’s questioning gaze lingering on him, he worried that maybe he had gone too far. That the praise was more than just the talk of a teammate, but bordering on undue adulation. Kevin rarely complimented anyone on the team, and if Neil had any suspicions about why Kevin was investing so much time into him after his supposedly private confession to Andrew, Kevin thought this might be enough to confirm that his secret was out.

Fortunately, Kevin didn’t have time to over-analyse what he had said when their game against Breckenridge was coming up in a matter of mere hours. Classes had started the day before, and he spent the time between them pouring over gameplay notes. When it finally came time to step into the stadium, he focused on setting aside Andrew’s mind games for one night so he could get Neil mentally prepared for his first game against a Class I collegiate team. He singled him out from the rest of the team and tugged him over to step onto the inner court.

The two of them had practically lived on The Foxhole Court all summer, but it was almost unrecognisable on game night. Sixty-five thousand fans decked in orange and white were pouring into the seats lining the perimeter of the court, and the rumble of excitement vibrated through the floor into his very bones. He looked over and watched Neil’s reaction to the crowds and felt a pang of nostalgia for his wide-eyed expression and wished his own excitement wasn’t tainted with the black and red claws gripping at his heart.

When people started to notice them standing in the entrance, the energy in the stadium sparked. The roars of tens of thousands of Palmetto Fox fans intertwining with the drumbeats from the Orange Notes was deafening. These were the diehards who supported their underdog team through thick and thin, and for the first time in years they had high expectations with new blood on the team. The odds were stacked against them when they were facing a team as strong as the Breckenridge Jackals, but they had to try.

With the waves of cheers still crashing against them, Kevin had to lean close to Neil’s ear and shout to be heard.

“Don’t waste their time tonight,” he reminded him, slipping back into his old coaching habits, “they came to see you play, so give them something to believe in.”

“They’re not here for me,” Neil turned, his breath ghosting across Kevin’s cheek as he responded, “They’re here to see the famous Kevin Day.”

Despite the heat in the stadium, a shiver ran up Kevin’s spine at Neil’s words. He didn’t linger to find out whether it was meant as a sarcastic self-deprecating barb, or a subtle attempt at flirtation. He shoved Neil back in the direction of the changing room before he could say anything else.

The rest of the night was a blur from the moment the starting buzzer sounded. The game was a mess. The Jackals had so many players they could afford to fight dirty and get yellow cards, and they targeted Kevin after he’d scored. Gorilla spent the first half hour smashing his racquet out of his hands, and his wrists ached with trying to keep it in his grip. Every time their sticks crashed together a phantom pain jerked across the back of his left hand, and with each additional hit the panic bubbled and amplified in his chest, mixing with the adrenaline into something nasty and suffocating. By the time the referees called a timeout for Matt and Gorilla’s brawl, he was shaking. He was certain his scars had torn straight open under his gloves.

Then, he was standing in the goal and Andrew was peeling off his glove for him. The court floor under him was black, and red blood was splattered across the back of his marred, torn open skin, fingers lifeless and unmoving. He sucked in a breath, and blinked. The Foxhole Court floor was a warm pine under his feet and only mottled pale scars stared back at him as he flexed his fingers. He was out. He was okay. He was safe.

“Kevin!” Dan’s shout drew his attention, and she pointed at the court doors. He was being benched. Andrew gave him a simple look that told him not to fight it. Sick disappointment settled in his gut as he left the court, and not even the supportive cheers of thousands of fans could numb the very real pain it brought. Without him on the court, they had no chance of winning this game when the score already sat at 2-1 to the Jackals.

But he was wrong. He watched in awe from the sidelines as Neil made an impossible twist of his body to get past Leverett. He took a swing. The goal lit up red and the buzzer above was like a defibrillator to Kevin’s system. Neil had scored.

Kevin leaped out of his seat and a triumphant yell ripped itself out of his body. Beers and orange streamers went flying as the audience lost their shit and the Orange Notes blasted out a ferocious victory tune. There must have been a similar reaction when Kevin had scored earlier, but being on the other side of the plexiglass gave him an entirely different perspective. Neil whirled around to look back at his team like he couldn’t believe what he had just done.

When they moved into the second half and Neil slammed a second shot into the Jackal’s goal, sticky, warm pride smoked up into Kevin’s chest. In that moment, he didn’t care about anything Andrew had said about the rookie striker’s supposed intentions or untrustworthiness. All that mattered was that Kevin had picked his file, put faith in his potential and it was actually paying off. Even when they eventually lost 7-9 to Breckenridge, Kevin had someone promising to work with—and for the first time since he’d returned to professional play, he felt hope.


	2. The Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kind comments! I know that this is a bit of a rarepair so I wasn't really expecting much response, but your support means a lot.
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Fairly long panic attack/PTSD episode and references to Jean's abuse.

Kathy Ferdinand’s show should have been a routine TV appearance. Growing up in the spotlight had made Kevin accustomed to being filmed, and exhausted from the previous night’s loss against Breckenridge, he hadn’t really dedicated any time to thinking about the show other than a short catch-up with his PR agent. He would just walk on set, turn on his camera smile, shake a hand and answer a few questions, maybe sign a few autographs on his way out.

His smile became a fraction more forced when Kathy turned her attention on inviting Neil to join the show. Neil looked every part the scared rabbit Andrew was making him out to be, and Kevin couldn’t comprehend why. Kathy was giving Neil what should have been any rookie athlete’s dream on a platter: a chance to develop his brand on national television alongside one of Exy’s biggest household names. Neil’s uncharacteristic shyness was so transparently fake that it infuriated him Neil would even attempt to use it as a reason to turn down such an opportunity, especially after everything he had invested into Neil so far. When Kathy continued to press him and his refusals revealed themselves to be thinly veiled aggressive stupidity, Kevin’s temper overtook and he stepped in.

“He’ll do it,” he said to Kathy, the tension in his body only narrowly disguised by the last remnants of his plastic smile. Kathy was either polite enough not to remark on the change in atmosphere or too excited to make preparations with her producer for the show.

Neil, however, was not so ready to let Kevin make choices on his behalf. He practically spat at him in French as he turned on him, “It’s not your decision. I’m not going on stage with you.”

Kevin glanced to Andrew at that comment. He knew Andrew didn’t understand French, but he was fluent in body language and was observing their interaction with a smug smile on his face. Neil’s reluctance to be associated with Kevin in public made his supposed obsession with him seem even more unlikely. Any other fan, romantically motivated or not, would be jumping at the chance. Neil was tangling himself in a web of lies and loopholes that were becoming increasingly impossible to ever unknot.

Neil saw the silent exchange between the two of them and he grasped desperately for a weak excuse, “I can’t be on TV.”

Saying that, in the world of professional Exy, was like saying you couldn’t pick up a racquet. Kevin snapped.

“You already were,” he pointed out as he jabbed a finger into Neil’s chest none too lightly. “You will do this today, or you and I are finished, in more ways than one.”

Neil’s eyes widened at the insinuation, panic creeping onto his features. Combined with Kevin’s flattery from yesterday’s headlines about Neil joining the team, Kevin assumed he had to have finally clued in that Andrew hadn’t exactly kept Neil’s ‘little secret’. But Kevin wasn’t done. Threatening to tear apart Neil’s fake hopes of dating Kevin Day wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to do real damage and hurt him where he knew Neil’s intentions were actually true.

“I will wash my hands of you on the court and you can struggle your way through mediocrity alone. You can return your court keys to Coach when we get back to campus. You won’t need them anymore.”

Neil looked crushed, “That isn’t fair.”

“Did you, or did you not promise me you would try?” Kevin reminded him.

“But this isn’t—I don’t want—”

“Don’t want what?” Kevin rounded on him, done with tiptoeing around Neil’s inconsistencies, “Don’t want to be associated with me? That’s funny, because you’ve given me a real different impression otherwise. Start making sense quick, because if you don’t want to be on this team I can give Kathy a real good reason not to have you on her show.”

Neil fell silent at that, staring down at his feet. Kevin didn’t actually have the jurisdiction to kick players off of his team, but after being the one to hand-pick Neil, he figured Neil would believe it. At the sound of her name, Kathy turned back to the pair, superficial concern stitched into her features, “Is everything alright?”

Kevin switched back to English and his superstar smile, “Of course. It’s all settled.”

Kevin made sure to steer Neil forward into the studio so he wouldn’t get any last minute ideas about disappearing, but after he petulantly shoved him off and Matt bodily intervened, the two didn’t have a chance to interact again until their escort dropped them off in the changing room. 

As soon as the door closed behind them, the tension in the air increased tenfold. Neil tucked himself against the vanity and wrapped his arms around himself. The fabric of his shirt was bunched up tight in his fingers and his discomfort sat in the rigidity of his shoulders. It was clear he wasn't going to make any effort to get ready for the show, so Kevin heaved a sigh and looked through the outfit racks for both them. He chose a dusty purple Henley shirt for himself and found a muted blue button-down and dark slacks that looked close to Neil’s size.

"Get changed," Kevin held the clothes out to Neil, who refused to budge. The temptation to just throw the hanger at him was overwhelming, but instead he crossed the room and pressed it to Neil's chest. He felt him stiffen under his knuckles but otherwise he didn't move.

"I shouldn't be doing this," Neil protested weakly.

"Yes, you should. Media appearances are part of your career now. You can't avoid them forever, so you might as well start now, and I’ll be with you so it’ll be easy.” Neil still looked uncertain, so he continued in an attempt to reassure him. “She’ll probably be focusing on me anyway. This is my first official public appearance since December, so…”

Neil glanced down at the mottled scarring across the back of Kevin's left hand. Kevin's gut reaction was to jerk back, but before he could, Neil's warm hand covered his own. Other than Abby and his physiotherapist, Neil was the only other person to have touched his scars since they healed. It felt oddly intimate and knowing, like Neil knew everything from just looking at him. Neil carefully pried the hanger from his fingers and only then did Kevin realise his own hand was trembling. There was no way Neil could have missed it. 

Kevin turned away before Neil could ask any questions, and started to get dressed. Wymack had told Andrew the truth about how Riko broke his hand when Kevin was brought onto the team. Although his father had been well intentioned in imparting the knowledge, it left Kevin feeling slightly betrayed and paranoid that other people would find out too. He didn’t want Neil’s pity, and worse still he didn’t want to find out that Neil knew more than he should. He knew that he could keep his cool for the cameras and recite the story about the skiing trip he never went on, but if Neil looked at him the way he just did and asked him for the truth, he wasn’t sure how convincing he would be.

He was rolling up the sleeves on his shirt when Neil finally spoke up, "Why did you tell the ERC I would make Court?"

The uncertainty in Neil's voice made Kevin turn back around to look at him. Neil had buttoned his shirt up all the way to the top, looking less like a young hip athlete and more an awkward boy on his first day at a new job. He was staring down at the thin black necktie in his hands hopelessly. Kevin sighed and crossed back over to help him out. Neil tried to lean away while Kevin reached to unbutton his collar, but then stopped himself. When Kevin took the tie from his hands and looped it around his neck, Neil let him.

"Because when you stop being impossible and do what I tell you to, you will," Kevin answered. Neil didn’t respond, and when Kevin looked at him, he had a faraway expression. He gave Neil’s tie a quick tug to get his attention.

“So what are you going to tell Kathy?”

Kevin was close enough to hear Neil when he mumbled. “That I hate you.”

“You don’t.” Kevin finished knotting the tie and brought it to Neil’s throat. It was impossible to believe Neil hated him when he could feel him brimming with nervous energy under his fingertips. 

“How would you know?” Kevin ignored Neil’s petulant desire to argue and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows to match the way he was dressed. There was a subtle strategy behind the colour choices and styling decisions—even if they might be at each other’s throats behind closed doors, he needed them to look like a unified front for the cameras.

He left Neil hanging for a reply until he had finished smoothing his cuff. He was certain Neil knew anyway, so he figured it was time to just clear the air, but he wasn’t expecting the revelation to land well.

"I know because Andrew told me."

Neil jerked his elbow out of Kevin's grasp and took a step back, horror etched onto his features, "What?"

"Relax. It's fine. I—"

Before Kevin could finish what he was about to say, there was a sharp knock at the changing room door and a runner poked her head in.

"Mister Day? We're ready to take you over for makeup."

Neil was surprisingly quick at wiping his expression into a facade of calm neutrality with the presence of a new person in the room. Kevin pointed at the sheet of questions on the vanity and calmly told him to review them in preparation for the show. He was reluctant to leave Neil unattended, especially after how their conversation had ended so abruptly. He half expected him to pull another Columbia escape act out of the changing room window.

So, when the show began and Kathy called Neil to the stage, Kevin was honestly surprised to see Neil step out from the wings of the set. In spite of his earlier trepidation at appearing on TV and his panic at Kevin alluding to knowing his secret, Neil’s expression was eerily calm. Kevin suspected he either had one hell of a poker face, or Andrew was right about him being just a tangle of lies and Kevin’s earlier ‘revelation’ had meant nothing to him.

But when Neil sat next to him, Kevin could feel him tense against his side at Kathy's first comment.

"Isn't this an interesting picture? Kevin is paired again."

Her smile was mischievous as she regarded Neil. Her word choice was so particular that Kevin instinctively searched past the studio lights for Andrew in the audience. He was sprawled out in his front row seat, a manic grin stretched across his face. Kevin didn't know if Andrew had said something to the producers, or if he was simply pleased to see Neil in the hot seat already.

Kathy continued, "I'm not exaggerating much when I say you're the talk of the nation, Neil. You're the amateur who caught a national champion's eye. That kind of thing should only happen in fairy tales, don't you think? How does it feel?"

Neil handled himself well, somehow managing to keep Kathy on the topic of Exy, and his history of playing for Millport in Arizona. Kevin dully noted that he somehow managed to navigate the conversation without really saying anything new that hadn't already been released in earlier press releases, and perhaps that was why Kathy went for her next comment.

"Well, if it bothers you, I'll take your spot," Kathy went as far as winking at Neil, "I don't mind cozying up to Kevin."

Neil went completely rigid against Kevin's side. There was no way that she could have known what was going on, but it felt like Kathy knew exactly what she was doing by directing such a blatantly suggestive comment at a rookie during his first TV appearance. 

Thankfully Kevin had enough interview experience to save him, and he jumped in before Neil could formulate a response.

"Come on now Kathy, would you really come between two strikers?"

She laughed, delighted to have gotten Kevin's attention, "Is it possible? It's not secret there was hostility between you and the Foxes' strikers last year. Last night made it obvious there are still problems to work through with Seth." She gestured to the large screen behind her as it cut to a replay of the fist-fight between Kevin and Seth only thirteen minutes into their game against Breckenridge.

"That doesn't seem to be the case with you two, however."

The replay cut to the moment Neil scored, and then to a close-up of Kevin jumping up from the bench and cheering. The rest of his team were celebrating just as hard around him, but they were mostly cut out by the camera angle. Kevin’s reaction was pretty normal for a teammate but it felt like Kathy was clearly trying to push a different agenda. She was very vocal about how much of a diehard Ravens fan she was, and Kevin wasn’t particularly known for his enthusiastic responses to goals back then. She was trying to weave a narrative around Kevin’s newfound enthusiasm and he wasn’t going to allow it.

Neil looked to Kevin for a response. It was most likely the first time he had seen the footage since last night, and his expression was unreadable. Kevin couldn’t deny the footage and defending it would look suspicious, so instead he deflected to talk about his dynamic with Seth and how Neil's newness to the sport meant he was more malleable as an athlete. Kathy seemed unimpressed at his ability to shut down her line of questioning so easily, so she was quick to move the topic on to Edgar Allan.

Kevin's heart raced, but he was prepared for this. He recited carefully rehearsed lines he had gone over with his PR agent, delicately balanced word choice to reaffirm his commitment to Palmetto without insulting Edgar Allan. As she continued to press question after question about the Ravens and Riko, ice slipped into his veins, wrapping around his chest and constricting tight enough to choke.

"Well then, have I got a treat for you!"

Kevin couldn't hear the war song drumming from the speakers even as it vibrated through the floor and his bones. It had been replaced with a high pitched tinnitus ripping into his very soul. The studio lights were brighter than ever but he felt his vision going dark as the one person he never wanted to see again stepped out to stand in front of him. 

Riko Moriyama’s switchblade mouth sliced open a cruel smile, “Kevin. It’s been so long.”

He didn’t know how he stood up. His entire body was cold and Riko tore his hand free from the liferaft keeping him afloat to shake his for the cameras. Riko poured sea water into his lungs and drowned him as he pulled him in for a hug. The clapping in the studio was from a distant shore miles above that Kevin would never hope to reach.

He didn’t remember opening his mouth, but he knew he gave Riko some sort of response to his false pleasantries. That was how his master had trained him, after all. Speak only when spoken to. He sat when he was told, obedient like the dog he was. He would beg on command, as was expected of him.

Riko dominated the conversation for a while, and Kevin was okay with that. It was familiar, and he swayed in and out of cognisance as Riko ripped Kevin’s wounds open for the audience to watch. He recounted December, or rather Riko’s version of December where Kevin had gone skiing and lost it all. He had heard and recounted that speil so many times that he sometimes forgot it wasn’t the truth.

Kathy prompted him at some point, and Kevin delivered an autopilot response that had been drilled into him by the Raven’s PR team. He vaguely wondered how many network laws they were breaking right now by interviewing a corpse on live television. Surely with his heart torn out and thudding dully on the coffee table next to his untouched glass of water, he couldn’t last much longer. In his head, he counted down in French to the moment he would drop dead. He hoped it would come before he hit zero.

“I thought friends were supposed to cheer each other on,” a voice next to him cut through the haze. He turned his head to stare incredulously at Neil as he spoke up. He had completely forgotten he was there.

“Believing in him now is the least you could do after completely abandoning him last winter.”

This was the shock that kicked Kevin’s failing heart back into life. He broke the surface and sucked in a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. Kathy spoke before he could fully get his bearings.

“Ah, forgive my bad manners. Let’s get the pair of you introduced, although I’m sure neither of you need an introduction by now. Riko, Neil. Kevin’s past and present, or should I say past and future?”

Neil’s leg began to bounce nervously next to his, and Kevin only just became aware that his entire thigh was pressed tight up against his. He wasn’t sure when that had happened, but Neil’s nervous energy was enough to keep him tethered to the present—to him.

Riko looked at Neil with the same disgust as being forced to acknowledge a cockroach in the room, “Mine and Kevin’s relationship is unique, and I do not expect you to understand it. Do not impress on us your petty ideas of friendship.”

“Was unique,” Neil’s tongue was quick, too fast for Kevin to keep up as he repeated himself for emphasis, “ _ Was _ . I’m pretty sure your relationship died when he couldn’t keep up with your team anymore.”

Neil engaged in a dangerous battle with Riko, hitting back at every statement with venom more potent than Riko’s last, belittling him and turning him back into a small child with marker pen on his cheek. Kevin was stunned in simultaneous awe and terror, seeing his personal nightmare get torn down by Neil, word by word. He could only stare at Neil in awe as he navigated the battle, but the awe ebbed away to leave behind a sick feeling in his stomach.

Being disrespected wasn’t something Riko would tolerate. Being humiliated on national television would face retaliation. Kevin’s mouth dried up and he could only pinch Neil’s arm in warning as he continued to mouth off, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything or interject. There wasn’t space in between them anyway; Neil and Riko were slashing into each other with wild abandon and Kathy was happy to just sit back and watch her ratings go up.

She only turned her attention back to Kevin when it was time to wrap up the show.

“Orange or black, Kevin? What colour is your future?”

Neil’s arm tensed under Kevin’s grip. Without realising during the interview, Kevin had wrapped his hand around Neil’s arm so tightly he wouldn’t have been surprised if he left bruises. But letting go felt like unmooring himself from the dock, pushing off without a sail or an oar. He felt like he was going to be sick as he replied.

“I already said it. I would like to stay at Palmetto as long as they’re willing to have me.”

A resounding cheer of familiar voices washed over them as Kathy closed out the show, and then she was shaking their hands and saying something Kevin didn’t really register. He couldn’t figure out how to move his feet, but Neil gently pushed his zombie-like body towards the wings to get him off stage and the noise of the audience and the lights of the stage faded to a distant hum. It was instead replaced by a large thud a second after Neil’s hands were ripped from Kevin’s back.

“I do not approve, Kevin. You should get rid of him as soon as possible.” Riko spat, and Kevin turned around to see that Riko had followed them and pinned Neil up against the wall. Suddenly the hallway felt even darker than it was, walls closing in around him in the same claustrophobic way the tunnels in the Nest did. Kevin flinched as he saw himself in Neil’s place for a split second. His hands were screaming to lurch forward and tear him free from Riko’s claws, but his shoulders were locked in place. He couldn’t move.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he found the will to speak up, “You saw our game last night. He has potential.”

“Potential?” Riko slammed Neil against the wall again so hard the younger striker sagged forward, winded. Then he rounded on Kevin.

“You said that goalkeeper had potential, and then wrote him off as useless when I offered him to you. You’ll get bored of this one just as quickly. Believe me.”

The comparison was unfair, considering Andrew’s circumstances when he had tried recruiting him from the Eagles. And with distance from the Nest and hindsight twitching in Kevin’s scarred hand, he could completely understand Andrew’s choice to reject him when he did. Neil’s situation was different.  _ Neil _ was different. There was no point defending himself to Riko now, even if the ghost of Riko’s collar still chafed around his throat, choking would-be words to dust.

“Answer me,” Riko switched to Japanese, the language stirring an unfamiliar muscle that Kevin hadn’t used for nine months, “You will get bored of him, you will get bored of being mediocre and you will come back to me, where you belong.”

His mouth was dry as he replied, the language he had only ever used with the Moriyamas feeling like acid on his tongue, “I won’t.”

Riko closed in on him and punched a finger into Kevin’s chest, carving out a new wound, “Yes, you will. I don’t care what ridiculous reason you’ve invented to make yourself think sticking around for this worthless piece of trash is a valuable use of your time. Every striker on our bench is better than him. Two goals against a team like Breckenridge is nothing. You know this.”

“It’s not just that…” in a moment of madness, Kevin attempted to defend himself. He immediately regretted it as Riko’s eyes widened.

“Oh, it’s like that then?” His laugh mocked Kevin, “So Lydia wasn’t your type? You know I can arrange someone more to your liking. Jean is always willing.” All of the colour drained out of Kevin’s face, and he felt like he was about to pass out at the insinuation. Riko carried on, “You two were awfully close, whispering away your sweet nothings to each other in French like I wouldn’t notice. He misses you oh so dearly, Kevin, in fact he often screams your name when—”

“Leave him alone.”

Riko was cut off as he was abruptly dragged backwards by Neil. The murderous look on Riko’s face was one Kevin had seen countless times, and instinct made him reach out to grab his arm before he could punch Neil. Instead, white hot pain splattered across his nose as Riko’s elbow slammed back into his face. He staggered back and tried to stem the bleeding before he could drip blood onto the Nest’s floor. The master wouldn’t like it if he made a mess. He had to stop the bruising before the next Ravens press conference. Riko couldn’t get in trouble for this, he needed an excuse for how it happened before anyone asked—

“Don’t touch my things, Riko. I don’t share.”

Andrew. If he was here, he wasn’t in the Nest. He wasn’t a Raven. He was a Fox. A hand wrapped around his bicep and he was being pulled to his feet from the ball he had curled himself into against the wall. He vaguely registered the person leading him away was Neil. He dragged him through the halls until they found the exit, where the rest of the team were waiting alongside Wymack and Abby. Neil only let go when she broke away from the group to pull Kevin into a protective hug. He wanted to collapse in her arms, her motherly tendencies almost lulling him into a false sense of security. But he knew nowhere was safe. Riko wouldn’t let any of them get away with the way he had been treated. He would respond tonight.


	3. The Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Blood mention, allusions to Andrew's past, canon-typical drug use (cracker dust)

Avoiding the rest of the Foxes’ unwanted sympathy or pitiful looks was tiresome, so as soon as they were back at the dormitory Kevin let Andrew shove him into their room. He instantly collapsed into one of the beanbag chairs and curled up so he could check out and let the world just move around him.

Nicky, Andrew and Aaron were furious that they couldn’t help him during Kathy’s show. Neil had done their job of looking after Kevin for them, much to Andrew’s obvious displeasure. It seemed Neil’s behaviour directly contradicted Andrew’s theories about his intentions towards Kevin, and Kevin couldn’t really understand why Andrew cared. If Neil genuinely was romantically interested in him, then it wasn’t a big deal. And if he was lying, then at least he was continuing to prove time and time again that he wasn’t a direct threat to Kevin. At this point, Neil had proven himself on the court _and_ stood up to Riko, so Kevin didn’t really mind either way.

Having even less information on Neil’s intentions, Nicky couldn’t understand or accept why Andrew distrusted Neil so much. Their strained argument went in circles and ended in a heated nowhere, so Andrew split off to shut himself in the room. Kevin flinched when he could hear glass shattering from behind the thin door. Aaron simply sighed and went to the kitchen, effectively volunteering Nicky to find out what happened.

Nicky came out white-faced and went to speak to Aaron in hushed tones, and then left shortly after, if the sound of the front door closing was anything to go by. Kevin couldn’t muster the energy to roll over and check. It opened again later and he could hear someone going into the bedroom. It wasn’t Nicky, because he settled down next to Kevin a moment later.

“Neil’s speaking to Andrew,” he informed him, and when Kevin didn’t respond he cautiously added, “He punched the window earlier. His hand’s all busted up.”

Kevin’s scars itched on the back of his hand. “Can he still play?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me get near him. There’s a lot of blood. I’m hoping Neil will somehow convince him to get Abby to look at it, because he sure as hell won’t listen to me.”

Kevin sighed and closed his eyes. None of them had any hope in telling Andrew to do anything he didn’t already want to do, and he didn’t see why Nicky thought Neil would be any different. If Kevin had any more energy or emotional capacity left in his system, he would have already been in that room telling Andrew exactly how much of an idiot he was and personally dragging him to the team’s nurse.

“Matt says he can fix the window once Andrew’s out of the room. I offered him three hundred bucks. One hundred from each of us. That cool?”

“Whatever.” Kevin wasn’t unaccustomed to covering for Andrew by this point; the protection the goalkeeper provided for him, both on and off the court, more than made up for it. A hundred dollars, while annoying, wasn’t much of a scratch on his inheritance from his mother or the sponsorship money he collected from the various brands he was signed to. He could afford it.

Nicky got the hint that Kevin wasn’t in the mood to talk, so he simply slouched against the side of his beanbag and flipped through channels to kill time. He appreciated the company, the minor distraction being enough to keep him from sinking too deeply into his thoughts. He heard the bedroom door open and he glanced over his shoulder to see Neil slipping out of the apartment. Neil didn’t look over his way, but Kevin could tell from the stiffness in his shoulders that it probably hadn’t gone well.

Not too long after Neil left, Renee entered the dorm and called out a soft hello to him and Nicky. She disappeared into the bedroom and emerged a while later with Andrew in tow. His hand was wrapped in a white bandage and the dazed smirk on Andrew’s face told that he had taken his most recent dose. Kevin was relieved that Andrew had remembered, because after the day he’d had, he wasn’t really in the state to be looking after Andrew as well as himself.

Renee approached the beanbag and kneeled down next to him and Nicky to get on his level, “How are you feeling, Kevin?”

Kevin simply gave her a dead stare. She gave him a nod in silent understanding.

“I know it’s difficult for you to speak about this, but it is very important that we know how soon we can expect Riko to respond to what happened today. Do you have an idea?”

Kevin sighed, bringing his fingers up to rub the bridge of his nose as he thought. He knew Riko all too well, how his pride was intimately intertwined with his impatience. He had seen first hand how many times Jean’s temper had tempted Riko’s ire as soon as they could get behind a closed door. On the rare occasion where Kevin himself had stepped out of his designated place, he had been on the receiving end of that vengeance himself.

Honestly, he was surprised that nothing had even happened yet. He dropped his hands lifelessly to his lap and looked at Renee.

“We’ll hear back tonight.”

“Do you know what he might do?” She pressed gently.

“No. I’d say be prepared for the worst, but there’s nothing we can do.”

“Oh Kevin, ever the pessimist,” Andrew cut in, “As much as I’d love to do nothing with you, I have other plans. We’re going to Columbia tonight.”

Nicky perked up, and Aaron stepped out of the kitchen with a curious look on his face. Kevin wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea, figuring some vodka would do his nerves some good.

“Riko can’t do anything to us if he doesn’t know where we are. And even if he did, the bouncers won’t let that piece of shit through,” Andrew counted off the three other men in the room with his good hand, “The four of us are going, plus Neil.”

“Seriously, Neil? After last time?” Aaron questioned, sceptical.

“He’ll come,” Andrew said confidently.

Nicky looked to Renee. “What about you?”

Renee shook her head, pastel curls bouncing around her cheeks, “The others are having a movie marathon tonight, so I’ll stay here and keep an eye on them.”

Kevin wasn’t really sure what Renee could do to protect the rest of the team, but Andrew seemed appeased with her response and he wasn’t about to question it. After wishing them a good evening she left, and Nicky was sent off to go buy new clubbing clothes for Neil, since the last set had been partially flushed down a toilet. Andrew sent Aaron with him so they’d have safety in numbers, or perhaps so he could get Kevin on his own.

Andrew squatted down in front of Kevin once the dorm door was locked behind them. Kevin didn’t meet his eyes at first, but Andrew clicked his fingers in front of his face until he got his attention.

“Listen up. I need to know how fucked up you are from today. Are you back on earth yet?”

Andrew’s detached way of showing concern for Kevin’s mental state always toed the line between obnoxious and unexpected. Kevin shot him an annoyed look but answered him all the same.

“I’ll be better after we go to Sweetie’s.”

“That’s not an answer. I need to know whether I’m babysitting you tonight or not.”

“I’ve had better days,” Kevin answered slowly, looking away. Verbally acknowledging where his mental state sat helped clear his head somewhat, but it was always uncomfortable, “It’s been nearly ten hours, and we’re not in the same city as him anymore. I’m okay.”

Andrew reached forward to grip Kevin’s chin tightly, tugging him to face forward and look him in the eyes. Kevin held his stare, not really sure what Andrew was searching for, but after a minute he let go, seemingly satisfied.

“I had another little talk with Neil. His white knighting of you on national television has put a rather large target on his back, don’t you think? I’m going to make sure he stays here with us, and you’re going to help me.”

“And how do you propose I do that?”

“Tonight at Eden’s, Aaron and Nicky will go dancing. I’ll leave you two to your own devices. It’s time for you to fulfil your end of the deal. Even if you only have two brain cells left to rub together, I’m sure you can figure out what to do.”

Kevin thought about the rapport he had built up with Neil over the past few months, and what Andrew was suggesting would shatter it all in an instant. “I’d rather not lose a striker tonight, thanks.”

“Did we, or did we not have a deal?”

“Our deal was to make sure he wasn’t a mole for Riko. I think today was enough evidence to establish that he’s not.”

“No, our deal was to find out what he’s hiding. If I’m going to have any chance of watching his back, I need to know what his dirt is before Riko digs it up for us. And he will. We can only start to prepare once he gives up this lie that he’s into _you_.” Andrew emphasised his final word with a dismissive flick of his fingers at Kevin, as if he was appalled by the very thought that Neil could be into _Kevin_ of all people.

His ego bristled angrily. Kevin didn’t think it was that far-fetched that Neil could be genuinely into him. He recalled the lingering glances, the ambiguous words that could have been subtle flirtation. The way Neil’s leg pressed up next to his on stage, and the way his pulse raced against his fingertips when he had adjusted his collar that morning. All of those could be easily explained as coincidence or acting, sure, but Kevin didn’t completely hate the idea of imagining they could be something real. Andrew had only ever found Neil’s supposed interest in him laughable before, so he didn’t understand where this sudden animosity was coming from.

“And what if he isn’t hiding anything? Are you going to make me fuck him to prove your point?” Kevin spat. Andrew reeled back, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. Kevin realised instantly he had gone too far; his brush with Riko that morning, and the things he had suggested about Jean, had pushed his subconscious to a dark place.

“Let me make this very clear,” Andrew began carefully, “There is no universe or alternate reality where I would tell you to fuck someone or do anything remotely like that against your, or their, will. I have only suggested you talk to or flirt with him, and you are under zero obligation to do anything physical. Do you understand?”

Kevin felt sick, guilt sticking in his throat like seafoam. “I understand.”

Andrew slowly took his cigarettes out of his back pocket and began to light up, letting Kevin sink deep under the heavy silence that poured out between them. Andrew’s hands were trembling slightly as he lit up, and Kevin didn’t have the courage nor the heart to reprimand him for not opening a window. He held his breath as he waited for Andrew to take a long drag so he could process, edit and speak.

“I should have known better than to make this deal with you.” He began, smoke billowing out from his mouth, a thick shield that protected him from Kevin’s interruptions. “You’ve failed to deliver on your first promise to me so far, so why did I expect anything different this time? I hate being made to look a fool, Kevin. Our deal is off.”

“What?” Kevin jolted upwards—he knew how seriously Andrew took his deals, and this response was unprecedented.

“Your neanderthal brain clearly can’t navigate this situation with Neil without jumping to extremes. So I will find a different way to get his secrets out of him, without your involvement. You’re off the hook. Got it?”

“Andrew, wait, I can still—”

“No.”

“I’m not going to fuck him, it was just an example—”

“This isn’t up for negotiation. The deal is over, as are your evening sessions.”

“Oh, come on! Andrew, this is ridiculous.”

“No, it isn’t. We’re done here.” Andrew stood up, punctuating the end of their argument. “Now go get ready, we’re leaving in three hours.”

\-----

The weight of Andrew ending their deal before he could uphold his end of the bargain hung heavy around Kevin’s neck. Andrew had never opened up about his history to Kevin, but he had spent enough time around him to know that he didn’t like to be touched, and that consent was law to him. He didn’t know the details, nor did he want to, but it was easy to put together some grim theories of why these things mattered to him so much. So knowing that he had overstepped a line, even if it was only in heated words, gnawed at his thoughts. He hated knowing that he might have stirred up something unpleasant from Andrew’s past, but what he probably hated even more was that Andrew wasn’t even giving him a chance to try to fix things.

He couldn’t tell if attempting to uphold his end of the bargain, even after its termination, would redeem him in Andrew’s eyes or further condemn him. Andrew’s frosty attitude towards him since they arrived at Eden’s told him he was damned either way. Part of him hoped that if he proved Neil was lying tonight, that Andrew would let their whole conversation blow over in favour of getting to finally interrogate him. But primarily it was in Kevin’s nature to be contrary, especially now that he had the freedom to do so outside of the Nest. So if Andrew told him not to do something, it was only natural that he would want to do it now, right?

Maybe that was the reason why he couldn’t stop staring at Neil once the strobe lights and smoke of the Eden’s gave him the relative discretion to do so. And all discretion went out the fucking window once Andrew got back with their tray of drinks and they broke out the cracker dust. With South Carolina’s blue laws coming into effect at midnight, they had just under two hours to drink as much as they could before alcohol sales closed. And after the day he had, Kevin was not about to waste time in getting absolutely shit-faced.

Aaron and Nicky staggered off to the dance floor after they had downed a respectable four drinks each, and Kevin was nursing a fifth while a sixth and seventh sat next to him for later. Andrew collected up their empty glasses and gave Kevin a meaningful look which he knew by now to interpret as not to expect him back any time soon. As long as Andrew continued to bring him drinks, Kevin would continue to turn a blind eye to Andrew’s disappearing acts at Eden’s. He didn’t particularly care to find out what he was up to.

Once Andrew was gone, Kevin propped his cheek up against his hand and turned his full attention back to Neil. It was the first time they had been alone since the changing room at Kathy’s show earlier that day. It felt like a lifetime ago. Neil was hardly even recognisable from then, dressed in the new clothes Nicky had picked out for him, all black and form-fitting. He had thrown away his brown contact lenses again, unearthing his deja vu blue eyes. Kevin would have been content to stare into them all night and figure out why they felt so eerily familiar if Neil would meet his gaze, but instead he was sitting stiff as a board, looking anywhere but at him.

Neil’s last experience in Eden’s had likely set his paranoia on high alert. He nervously swiped the rim of his soda can with his thumb before every sip, as if it was possible some cracker dust could have snuck past him in the two minutes since his last drink. They had managed to snag a relatively private booth table tucked into a dark corner, but every so often Neil would crane his neck up to look past the bobbing heads of the dance floor as if he was searching for something. Kevin doubted he was looking for Nicky or Aaron, and Andrew had headed to the bar in the opposite direction, so he could only imagine Neil was looking for the restroom or the exit.

With his legs sluggish and numb from the sheer volume of dust and drink Kevin had consumed in the past thirty minutes, there was no way he was going to be able to chase after Neil if he decided to make a break for it again. So he needed to keep him there at least until the others got back. Kevin wanted nothing more than to sit in silence and continue drinking until he blacked out and hopefully forgot about his encounter with Riko for good. But the dust thrumming in his veins made him impulsive and with his judgement sitting at half mast, he decided he could at least make an attempt to engage Neil in some form of conversation to keep him there.

“Hey,” he attempted.

Neil either didn’t hear him over the bass or was ignoring him because he didn’t respond. Kevin repeated himself, shouting over the music this time to be heard.

“I said hey!”

Neil slowly turned around to face him, cocking an eyebrow at him. Seriously, fuck this kid’s attitude.

“What?” Neil replied, a partial yell over the booming music of the club. Kevin sighed. This was why he normally didn’t try to make conversation at Eden’s. It was pointless to compete with the cacophony of sounds blaring over the speakers.

He crooked a finger at Neil to beckon him closer, and Neil sat stock still and merely looked at him defiantly. Kevin rolled his eyes and leaned over, hand cupped to the side of his mouth so he could yell into Neil’s ear with any hope of being heard.

“About today,” Kevin began, but hesitated. Neil leaned into his cupped hand, and Kevin took that as encouragement that he was listening now. His heart was hammering away at the inside of his rib cage but the dust was padded white walls lining the interior. It made him feel safe and numb enough to speak his mind where a sober version of him would have never parted his lips.

“You’re a fucking idiot for standing up to Riko, but… thank you.”

Neil leaned back to look Kevin in the eye. It felt like he was being scrutinised for his sincerity for the second time that day. He half expected Neil to roll his eyes and shrug him off, but then Neil learned in and ghosted a response against his cheek.

“You would have done the same for me.”

Neil pulled back and returned to nervously fiddling with the tab on his drink. Kevin wasn’t sure if Neil was right. Would he have put himself in Riko’s firing line for Neil? Probably not. He didn’t even do it for Jean, and he had known him for years. He’d only known Neil for a handful of months, with only the most recent ones being anywhere near remotely pleasant, and even that had been oddly intertwined with Andrew’s latest scheme and Kevin second guessing all of Neil’s intentions.

Neil kept shifting nervously under his gaze, looking to his drink and then back to Kevin and then back to his drink again. Kevin distantly realised he was staring, but couldn’t really find the will to care or to stop. Neil eventually cracked under the pressure, and he jolted forward to speak into Kevin’s ear again.

“What did Andrew tell you about me?”

When he finished his question, Neil sat back and fisted his hands in his lap. It looked like he was trying to stop himself from shaking. Kevin thought that maybe he should have an internal debate on whether he should tell him the truth, but the dust already opened his mouth and he leaned back into Neil’s space to reply.

“He told me you’re in love with me.”

Kevin felt Neil tense up next to him, like he was waiting for a second blow. Belatedly, Kevin realised it was probably because he hadn’t pulled back from whispering in his ear yet. When he didn’t add anything else, Neil cautiously turned his face to the side to reply, “Is that it?”

Kevin nodded and pulled back to take a sip from his drink. Neil looked at him searchingly, either because he was expecting something else or some form of rejection from Kevin, but neither came. Neil‘s shoulders visibly relaxed, and he mirrored Kevin by taking a sip from his soda. He was more fluid when he leaned back in to ask his next question.

“It doesn’t bother you?”

Kevin shrugged. “Why would it? A lot of people are into me.”

Neil’s low chuckle in his ear was mocking. “Wow. How did you fit into the club with your head that big?”

Kevin didn’t think he was flaunting his ego that much. He was simply stating a fact. He had played with the Edgar Allan Ravens, he had made Court, he had been on the cover of magazines. He had fans and they sent him love letters. Stating that people were into him wasn’t any different from stating that he had the number two tattooed on his cheek.

The music in the club shifted to something quieter but with a heavier beat that underlined the tension that was building up between them. Neil slouched back into his seat and looked away from him at the crowd again. Kevin felt like he spent a lot of time looking at the back of Neil’s head. He had memorised the way the dark wisps of hair dusted the faint freckles on the back of his neck and skimmed the tan-lines from where his higher necked t-shirts normally sat. He placed his empty glass down with a loud thud, his hands a little heavier and less coordinated than usual. His inhibition was pleasantly numb.

“Is that why you were avoiding me?” Kevin asked.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” Neil lied.

“Yes, you have. You are right now.”

“I come to practice with you every night,” Neil argued.

“You never look me in the face.”

Neil banged down his empty soda can onto the table and it crumpled a little under the force. He turned fully in his seat and put an arm over the back of the booth seat to stare directly at Kevin.

“I’m looking at you right now.”

The club lights danced across his freckled skin and picked out flecks of blue from Neil’s eyes before flashing away again. In that moment Kevin was slapped by a rush of nostalgia but the pain faded as fast as the hit came. Neil’s very existence was a word on the tip of Kevin’s tongue. He was a faded photograph in a sun-bleached history book, and the jumbled words in the annotations were getting under Kevin’s skin like paper cuts.

“Why do I feel like I remember you?”

Neil snorted. “Is that meant to be a pickup line?”

“No, I’m serious.”

“Hmm,” Neil tapped his finger to his chin in a sarcastic thinking motion. “Maybe I’m familiar because I’ve been practising with you all summer, and I’m, you know, on your team?”

“You’re infuriating.” Oh, he only meant to think that one. Well, it was said now. “I don’t mean like that. I mean from before.”

Kevin didn’t miss the way Neil went completely still, the one unmoving thing in the heaving nightclub amongst a sea of electric lights and digital smoke. He licked his lips before responding, “We never met before Millport.”

“I know,” Kevin agreed, and it was true. The tapes Hernandez had sent to them didn’t count, but they were the only logical explanation why he had felt like he had met him before. He picked up one of the untouched shots (It was his sixth? Seventh? Whatever.) and knocked it back to clear his thoughts. The tapes had been blurry and filmed at a distance, so why would Neil’s eyes in particular stir his memory?

“Nothing about you makes sense.”

Neil was staring at him with a strange expression that Kevin at first drunkenly misinterpreted as admiration for how easily he could put back a drink. He realised a moment later it was likely because he had spoken aloud again, but he decided fuck it, he had started his train of thought, so he might as well continue it.

“You, who plays Exy like his life is on the line, yet only picked it up a year ago by reading a guidebook and somehow has techniques like a backliner,” he was steadily leaning closer to Neil as he listed off each point, and Neil was stubbornly holding his ground. “You act meek and shy for everyone else but you have a filthy mouth in French, and somehow you’re not afraid to stand up to Riko, of all people, on national television. And then, for some reason, despite clearly having no interest in fashion, you go out of your way to wear coloured contacts every day—”

“Are you finished?” Neil cut him off. Leaning this close, it was hard for Kevin to read his expression, but he sounded pissed.

“And the last thing,” Kevin continued, “Is that I’m supposed to believe that you’re into me, yet you sure as hell don’t act like—”

Neil’s kiss was bruising and unapologetic, a harsh press of closed lips to prove a point. His whole body leaned into it for the brief moment it lasted, like he was trying to savour each microsecond. It was over before Kevin could really register what was happening and respond. Despite himself, he found that he missed the contact immediately.

“Believe me now?” Neil asked.

“Not yet,” and Kevin leaned back in.

This kiss was different. Neil sat stunned, most likely because he didn’t expect Kevin to reciprocate. Kevin should have felt smug at finally catching Neil out on his lie, but didn’t foresee the twinge of disappointment that came with it. The past two months of training with Neil had been comfortable—bordering on enjoyable—and he could tell even through the dust that his actions had just changed everything. Andrew would scare whatever secrets were lingering in Neil out of him, and then depending on what they were, likely drive him away from their team for good.

But then Neil melted against him, and Kevin didn’t know what to think anymore. Neil’s mouth was open and pliant, contradictory to everything he was, like he wasn’t a chaotic mess of secrets and this was his only truth to share. Actions spoke more than words, but it was unclear whether this was a rare sliver of honesty or just another deception. Kevin lacked the will to care and kissed him regardless. Later he would blame the drinks, or the dust. It was an easier reason to accept than his own carnal need for affection and validation, which had gone unchecked for a long nine months.

Neil’s fist in his shirt pulled Kevin forward and off balance, and he steadied himself with a hand on Neil’s thigh. The movement broke them apart for a second and when they came back together, it was like he was kissing a different person. Neil bit down on his lip and drew a groan from somewhere so deep Kevin didn’t even recognise it as his own. Fingers slid up the side of his neck and netted into his hair to tug hard. Neil’s kiss was like how he spoke French: unapologetically provocative, and Kevin thought he wouldn’t mind slamming him up against a wall again for his insolence.

Instead, Andrew slammed a tray of drinks onto the table and startled the two of them apart. Neil immediately picked up his empty can and pretended to drink from it in a failed attempt at nonchalance. Kevin made the mistake of looking Andrew in the face and the murderous look he was channelling was startling. He half expected to get stabbed as he reached forward to take his next round. Andrew’s silence as he took his seat in the booth next to him was worse.

A heavy, stifling blanket settled over them as neither Kevin nor Neil dared to say anything, and Andrew seemed content to let them stew. Kevin knocked back drinks until Aaron and Nicky showed up, and then knocked back some more as they produced another tray during last call. He lost count of how many he had after he got into double digits. When it came time to leave, his legs refused to cooperate and he had to clamber up Aaron’s side in order to get out of the booth. It was only when they got outside to the car and Aaron dumped him against the passenger door to fish out the car keys, that Kevin realised it had been Andrew carrying him all along. His hands felt like cotton wads as he numbly patted down his sides to check for knife wounds. He didn’t find any, but instead a wave of nausea took over him and he doubled over to puke on the pavement.

The cold passenger seat window was refreshing against the side of his face as they drove back to the house. He knew it was only seven minutes but it felt like hours until they pulled into the driveway. It was then that Aaron’s phone rang and the night skidded to a sobering halt. Seth was dead.


	4. The Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was tough to write, but it's extra long to make up for it being late. Also, the rating has bumped up from T to M.
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Descriptions of grief over Seth's death, canon-typical knife violence, a panic attack and sexual content.

Kevin found it difficult to muster the socially required level of empathy for Seth’s death to not come across as a complete sociopath. In the nine months that he had known him, their relationship had been nothing but strikingly unpleasant and abrasive. They had gotten into more fist fights than Kevin had with opposing teams in his entire professional career, and he could only see Seth as a fountain of negativity and the dam that impeded their progress.

Nicky couldn’t believe how heartless he was, and in one heated moment accused Kevin of showing no remorse for Seth’s death. Frankly, he couldn’t understand why Nicky cared so much after the repeated vicious attacks by Seth on Nicky’s sexuality. Maybe he had over-optimistically hoped for Seth to have a change of heart and redeem himself. Kevin thought he was foolish.

Aaron was also unexpectedly shaken by the news, and when Kevin had asked him why, Aaron simply explained that Seth had been a fighter. Aaron didn’t need to say anything more to fill in the blanks that he had seen his own struggles with recovery in Seth. If Andrew hadn’t intervened when he did, Aaron could have easily gone out just like Seth had, face down in a pool of his own vomit.

Even still, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had no attachment to Seth other than as a teammate, and Seth was not a major loss to their lineup. Sure, the Foxes were the smallest team in NCAA Class I Exy, and now without him their numbers only just made them barely qualified to play. They had even less margin for error now with yellow cards and injuries. But with Seth no longer on the team, he couldn’t help but think that they’d probably get less of both. He was the only one who instigated in-fighting, and with the exception of Matt’s calculated takedowns of problematic opponents it was rare that the others were carded (which was a miracle considering how cantankerous everyone was off the court). If anything, the team would probably perform better without him, with less distractions during their training sessions.

So he didn’t really understand why anyone expected any sort of emotional response out of him other than thinly veiled optimism. He felt marginally more justified when he saw how outwardly unaffected Neil and Andrew appeared to be after the news. Neil had taken the news in his stride, and Andrew had the audacity to appear downright pleased. His tasteless mirth triggered a brawl between him and Matt, and as a result the upperclassmen were segregated to Abby’s house for a few days until tensions calmed down. With Neil being the only one left in Seth’s old dorm room, he ended up staying with Wymack, which meant that Kevin didn’t see him again until Wednesday’s practice.

In a way, Seth’s death was a welcome distraction from analysing what had happened between him and Neil at Eden’s. Kevin had knocked back enough drinks that he had hoped he would have blacked out, forgotten it all and been able to deny it ever happening. Instead, Kevin remembered the entire night in strikingly crystal clear detail. The memory of Neil’s tongue in his mouth and teeth on his lip was a troublesome distraction, but to make things worse, Andrew had witnessed it all.

Andrew had been acting coldly towards him since Eden’s, even going as far as pretending Kevin was invisible or ignoring him when he asked direct questions. It was irksome, but what was far worse was that Andrew was serious when he said he was ending the evening training sessions. He wouldn’t even take Kevin down to the court, let alone Neil.

It meant that they didn’t see each other again until Wednesday afternoon’s practice. Andrew was down at Reddin for his appointment with Betsy, so Kevin hoped that his absence would provide an opportunity for him to speak to Neil and get a sense of how Saturday night had affected their relationship, but he was as unreadable as ever when they picked him up. Kevin’s interest in creating small talk dissipated as they approached campus. The white streamers decorating campus for their inaugural game last week had been replaced with black in mourning, and despite the August heat it made a cold chill trickle down his spine. When he blinked he was certain the remaining orange streamers had been replaced with red. He had to look over at Nicky in the driver’s seat to convince himself he was still in South Carolina. Nicky caught him staring and gave him a small, strained smile.

When they pulled into the stadium, Neil disappeared for a while. Kevin was too distracted to chase him down, so he focused on helping Aaron rearrange the lounge to disguise Seth’s empty seat. Even though Andrew was currently giving Kevin the silent treatment, he had still accepted Neil into his fold, and they also needed to create space for him to sit with the rest of his family. Aaron claimed the chairs either side of the couch for himself and Nicky, so that left the couch for Kevin, Neil and Andrew.

Even though they took opposite ends and left a space in the middle for Andrew, Kevin still felt paranoid about how the rest of the team might perceive his sudden closeness with Neil. He was fairly certain by now that Aaron and Nicky hadn’t seen anything at Eden’s, but it still gnawed at him. He felt like ‘I made out with Neil Josten and enjoyed it way more than I should have’ might as well have been tattooed right under his two. When Dan walked into the room, looked at Kevin but pointed at Neil while exclaiming, “What is that about?”, he instinctively rubbed at his cheek to check for ink smears.

“You knew what it meant when we took him Saturday night,” Aaron supplied, and thankfully the upperclassmen dropped it.

Wymack strode into the lounge a moment later and gave them a speech about Seth’s death that verged on callous, but held just enough of a challenging edge to inspire Dan and Matt. The hardened exterior that Kevin had inherited from Wymack had been refined at Edgar Allan while weakening his core, and he wondered if he would ever be able to harness it in the healthier way his father seemed to. Kevin kind of felt like he was a lost cause. Thankfully they had Dan there to captain the team.

He depended on her more than ever when Andrew returned from Reddin. He was barely in the room before a cop from the Oakland police department was on the phone for him. Andrew’s cheerful facade dropped almost instantly, and both Wymack and Dan tried and failed to get him to stay for practice. Kevin had no leverage over him when they were barely on speaking terms. With Andrew gone, Allison still grieving and Seth dead, their numbers for practice sat at a pathetic seven out of their usual ten. It was enough to tilt Kevin into single-mindedly focusing on his own drills, but Dan was the backbone of the team and she managed to rally the remaining Foxes into some semblance of a proper practice.

In that sense, it shouldn’t have come to much surprise that it was thanks to her that the two halves of their divided team began to stitch together. Somehow, after practice both Kevin and Nicky ended up in Seth’s old dorm with Matt, Dan, Neil and a bottle of rum. Nicky poured out drinks for everyone except Neil, who sat back with his empty cup curled close to his chest. Kevin wondered if Neil ever drank, or if he just didn’t feel comfortable doing it in front of him and Nicky. Considering his experiences the last two times he went to Eden’s with them, he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it was the latter.

Kevin glanced around the room as they drank. He had never gone past the doorway before when he picked up Neil for their evening practices, but even he could see the eerie gaps in furniture from where Seth’s things had been reclaimed by resident services. Matt kept staring at the place where Seth’s desk had once sat, indents from the legs still marking its outline in the carpet. It was a physical representation of the elephant in the room, Seth’s death, that nobody was ready to discuss.

Matt finally cracked and opened up a different topic by asking Nicky why Officer Higgins was involved in the twins meeting each other. It was story that Kevin had already heard, so he simply sat back and drank as Dan and Matt asked questions about the whole bleak tale. Neil mostly stayed quiet and listened, his knees curled to his chest as he fiddled with his empty cup in his hands. With everyone’s rapt attention focused on Nicky, the rum allowed Kevin to watch Neil for a little while. He was wearing his brown contacts again, and was wrapped up in a long sleeved crew neck despite the August heat that had banished everyone else to t-shirts. Neil caught him staring at least twice, and Kevin quickly snapped his gaze away each time.

It was frustrating how attuned Neil was to his surroundings. Kevin knew that if he could just get a longer look at his face, he’d realise why he kept tripping over that strange sense of familiarity when he looked at him. He stuck around when Dan suggested they order food and watch a movie in the hopes that he would figure it out.

There wasn’t enough space for all five of them on the couch, so Matt ended up on the floor with his back pressed up against Dan’s legs. Nicky tried a similar tactic with Neil, but Neil was quick to pull his feet up onto the couch and hug his ankles so Nicky could just lean against the front of the couch instead. It meant that the back of Neil’s hand was pressed against the side of Kevin’s thigh where they sat next to each other. Kevin was hyper aware of the contact and he couldn’t really focus on the movie once the lights went out. The presence of the other three people in the room paralysed him from doing anything about it, however. He feared being caught far more than what Neil’s reaction would be if he tried holding his hand.

That was a strange thought to process. How he had evolved—or regressed—from drunkenly making out with Neil simply for the physical validation to fantasizing about holding his hand during a movie was beyond him. He was half tempted to double check the percentage on the rum. Neil’s outward indifference towards their close proximity drove him crazier than he had ever anticipated. Before they had kissed, Kevin would have passed it off as disinterest. But now, he didn’t know how to interpret it. In a way, it felt like he was being ignored, or Neil was being deliberately elusive and playing hard to get.

Suffice to say, the movie ended and Kevin had barely taken in what it was even about. Nicky stood, and he took that as their cue to leave. He ended up going the entire evening without speaking a single word to Neil. He wouldn’t have even noticed something like that in the past, but now it bothered him.

Their dorm was empty when they got back. Andrew still hadn’t returned from his spar with Renee, and Aaron was also nowhere to be seen, likely using Andrew’s absence as an opportunity to visit Katelyn. Nicky had a paper due by Friday, so he buckled down to start working on it. Kevin figured he would try to get Neil off his mind by getting some studying done too, so he grabbed his laptop and opened up a web browser.

All thoughts of homework died as the cursor blinked invitingly at him in the search bar. He realised if he couldn’t figure out Neil’s face without being caught, he’d just have to do it when he wasn’t there to catch him. After a quick glance to check that Nicky couldn’t see his screen, and a subtle shift of his laptop to the side to prevent his prying gaze, his hands hesitated over the keyboard for a split moment before he began to type.

_Neil Josten_

The search results filled with clips from their interview with Kathy. Kevin’s stomach lurched when some of the thumbnails included shots of Riko, and he quickly scrolled past them to match coverage of their game against Breckenridge. He opened a few tabs of articles that promised a profile on the Foxes’ newest recruit, but none of them delivered any new information other than a few long-distance shots of Neil on court during the game with his helmet obscuring his face, which was useless to him. Other than Kathy’s show, he hadn’t done any media obligations yet, so that made sense.

One site had managed to snipe a pre-game photo of Kevin and Neil standing in the doorway to the inner court before they had gotten changed into their gear. Neil’s face was visible as Kevin leaned in his ear to speak to him, but the picture was dark and taken from far enough away that it didn’t show the smattering of freckles or facial details Kevin was looking for. He saved the photo anyway.

He opened a new search tab.

_Neil Josten Millport Dingos_

The results were sparse, just as they had been the first time Kevin had researched Neil after looking at his file. He switched to image view and scrolled through the photos that the search yielded. There were a few of him talking to Hernandez on the bench, but Neil’s face was often turned just far enough away from the camera that it never really caught his proper profile. It was like he had a sixth sense for knowing when someone was watching him. Kevin had it too, but he usually used it for making sure a good angle was caught on camera, not for hiding from it.

New tab.

_Neil Josten blue eyes_

As the images began to load, the door to their dorm opened. Kevin turned to check which twin it was, and upon spotting the satisfied smirk and bloodied knuckles, immediately identified him as Andrew. Nicky took out an earbud and waved to Andrew meekly in greeting. Kevin glanced at the clock—it was nearly ten thirty, and they should have already been down at the stadium doing drills by now. He snapped the lid of his laptop closed and followed Andrew into the bedroom.

“Are you going to join us for practice tonight, considering you skipped this afternoon?”

Andrew stopped in the middle of the room and laughed.

“Oh Kevin,” he slowly turned his head over his shoulder, and the rest of his body followed languidly like a snake turning on its prey, “Tell me, did you take a racquet to the head today? A little concussion maybe? You’ve already forgotten that our deal is off. I’m not taking you anywhere.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“Sure didn’t look like that on Saturday night with your tongue in Neil’s—”

Kevin slammed the door to the bedroom shut before Andrew could say anything else. He hoped to god that Nicky still had his headphones in.

“What’s your fucking problem, Andrew? I fulfilled our end of the deal.”

“It was over. There was no deal left to fulfill.”

“Fuck your semantics. The fact is I proved that he’s not lying. What more do you want?”

“I want nothing,” Andrew looked down at his bloodied knuckles, and then tapped a cigarette out of his packet, “A kiss doesn’t prove anything. Neil is a liar down to his very core.”

“I think the reason you hate the idea of him being interested in me so much is because you can’t stand the fact that you were wrong.” Kevin stepped forward and pointed an accusing finger at the packet in Andrew’s hands. “Don’t smoke that in here.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Andrew said as he lit up in front of him.

“Neither can you.”

“Apparently not.” Andrew blew a cloud of smoke into Kevin’s face. Kevin coughed and waved a hand to dissipate the smog before moving past Andrew to the window to push it open. It was still duct-taped together with Andrew’s blood on the screen from where he had punched it on Saturday. It hadn’t been repaired yet.

“Forget the new deal. What about our first one? How can I make you care if you don’t play?”

Andrew merely shrugged, “Doesn’t sound like my problem.”

“This is absolutely your problem,” Kevin spat. “You are an athlete. We have a game on Friday. We’ve just lost a player, and all you’ve done this week is antagonise the rest of the team and skip practice.”

Andrew’s insincere smile stretched across his features, “I’ve been in mourning.”

“Cut the shit, Andrew. You know, it’s real rich that you accused Neil of being a mole from Edgar Allan yet you’re the one who’s actively sabotaging our progress.”

“That’s cute. Ever considered if Neil hadn’t taken a shot at Riko on live TV, then Riko wouldn’t have had a reason to retaliate? Or have you got such a hard on for your little boyfriend that he can’t do anything wrong?”

Andrew’s collar was bunched up in Kevin’s fists in an instant.

“Don’t you dare. You have no idea what it was like up there. You didn’t do shit. Neil did. He—Fuck!” A stinging pain seared across his abdomen and Kevin dropped Andrew. His fingers sought out the shallow wound and came back red. He looked up to see Andrew twirling his bloodied knife between his fingers.

“Whoops, my hand slipped.” He stooped down to pick up his dropped cigarette. The cherry had burned a hole in the cheap dormitory carpet. He took a puff to keep it alive and then continued, wiggling the end of the blade at him tauntingly. “Here’s a tip. Stop trying to force me to like your dumb little game. You’ll have more success when you stop caring so much.”

“The reason you don’t put any effort in is because you’re scared. You’re afraid of trying and losing. Well guess what, shit fucking happens.” Kevin jerked his left hand up, baring his ugly scarring and bloodied fingertips for Andrew to see. “But at least you lived for a while when you cared.”

Something in Kevin’s words finally struck a chord within Andrew, and all expression dropped from his face. “I’m not in the mood for this anymore. Get out.”

“This is my room too.”

“Don’t care. Get out.” Andrew flicked his fingers at Kevin dismissively.

Kevin stormed out of the room, feeling frustrated and dissatisfied with their inconclusive fight. Arguing with Andrew while he was high was always infuriating, but risking it when he was sober would have guaranteed a knife three inches deeper in his gut, rather than just a scratch. He slammed the door behind him and the flimsy dorm walls trembled. He was too pissed to move from the spot, and took a moment to breathe and clench his fists.

Nicky’s concerned face peeked out from around the corner of the lounge. He took one look at the bloody gaping hole in Kevin’s t-shirt and winced.

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“Andrew cancelled practice,” Kevin seethed anyway, voice raising exponentially as he continued in the passive aggressive hope that Andrew would hear him through the door, “Which is great considering we have a game in two days, and we haven’t practiced properly since Friday!”

“Ah.” Nicky grimaced. “I’d offer to drive you, but I’m over the limit.” He mimed drinking with his pinky and thumb, referencing the rum he’d had earlier.

“Forget it, Nicky.” Kevin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. It was nearly eleven by now, and by the time he called anyone else to drive them over it would be too late to make any real progress on the court. He’d just have to review strats and the Terrapin’s profiles instead. He strode past Nicky and scooped up his laptop.

“I’ll be back later,” he offered bluntly.

“Oh, okay.” Nicky waved him off and Kevin tugged the door shut behind him. He crossed the external corridor and leaned on the bannister overlooking the parking lot outside Fox Tower. The summer evening air was refreshing on his flushed skin, and he took a few minutes to breathe and cool off. He would try again with Andrew tomorrow. The call from the Oakland PD had probably put him on edge, and as long as Andrew didn’t formally end their original deal, Kevin still had some leverage to work with.

A door opened down the hall and Kevin looked over his shoulder. Matt was stepping out of his dorm, and he paused when he spotted Kevin.

“Neil, he’s out here,” he called back into the dorm, and then turned his attention to Kevin, “He’s been waiting for over an hour, you know. At some point you have to let him sleep.”

Kevin didn’t feel like explaining himself to Matt, so he brushed past him and replied, “He can sleep when we’ve won finals.”

Matt scoffed and let himself into the girl’s dorm, likely to go visit Dan. Kevin entered Neil’s dorm and found him at the entrance, tugging on his shoes with his gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“Drop your stuff.” Kevin tapped the laptop tucked under his arm. “It’s just strat reviews tonight.”

Neil cocked an eyebrow at Kevin but dumped his gym bag obediently, “No Andrew tonight?”

“He wasn’t in the _mood_.” Kevin’s attempt at keeping his tone neutral failed fantastically. He was saltier than the Atlantic.

“Is he ever?” Neil quipped.

Kevin afforded Neil an amused look. Sometimes he felt like Neil was the only person on the line other than himself who actually cared about Exy.

Neil looked down at his shirt. “You’re bleeding.” He reached for Kevin’s laptop and he let him take it, silently grateful to have the weight out of his hands.

“As I said—Andrew wasn’t in the mood.”

Neil accepted the explanation and pointed to the washroom. “There’s antiseptic and bandages in the sink cabinet. I’ll get you one of Matt’s shirts.”

Kevin turned down the hall, grateful to have a chance to patch himself up after being kicked out of his room. Despite the dorms having identical layouts, being in Neil’s washroom was eerie. Some of Seth’s personal effects still lingered, unclaimed by resident services or Allison. A red band t-shirt he remembered him wearing once sat on the floor next to the tub and a third toothbrush was nestled in the cup at the sink. Opening the cabinet revealed a line of empty orange prescription bottles for antidepressants with GORDON, S printed on the sides.

He tried to block it out and focused on fetching the first aid kit. He didn’t care about Seth, but being surrounded by a dead man’s belongings played cruel tricks on his mind. The fluorescent lights flickered and the room seemed colder, the tiles darker. When he pulled off his bloodied shirt and it dropped it to the floor, it looked almost black next to the red of Seth’s t-shirt.

He slapped a hand over his mouth and retched. He knew he wasn’t in the Nest, but the air abruptly felt thick and muggy like the recycled ventilation from the underground dorms. He recognised the familiar grip of panic creeping up his neck, and helplessly willed it to stop as it constricted around his chest and drained all strength from his legs. The cold bathroom tiles tugged him down until he hit the floor, and kept pulling until he buckled forward and collapsed into his palms.

Each breath felt too shallow, too sharp, too short. His heart thumped thumped thumped in his chest, neck, ears. It muffled the voice trying to get through to him, jumbling the sentence into something that sounded like he should understand but the words just didn’t connect right.

Warm hands wrapped around his wrists and tugged in an attempt to pull his trembling fingers away from his face. The language shifted into familiar French and the words started to slot into place, began to make sense together. He was being reminded to breathe, being reassured that he was okay. It cracked the last of his resolve and he choked out a name.

“Jean?”

“I'm not Jean. Look at me. Kevin.” Persistent protective fingers pried at his palms until they peeled away from his face. Opening his eyes and sucking in a deep breath was like bursting through the surface after drowning. Painful, disorienting, freeing.

Jean’s dark hair came into focus. In the dim light of the bathroom, his grey eyes looked almost brown, and his tattoo seemed smudged, or perhaps not there at all. Kevin reached up to touch Jean’s cheek where it should have been, and the contact startled him back into the present.

“Are you okay?” Neil asked, still in French. Kevin pulled his hand back from his cheek.

“Yeah… yeah I’m okay.” He wasn’t. His tongue felt swollen as he formed the words in English. It didn't feel right.

Neil switched back to English seamlessly. “Can you stand?”

Kevin tried to push himself up from the floor with a grunt. He didn’t get very far before Neil hooked an arm around him and hauled him over to sit on the toilet lid. Neil leaned past him to push open the narrow bathroom window, and Kevin let himself slump to the side as the cool night air washed over his skin.

Neil crouched down in front of him with the antiseptic and a cloth in his hands. Kevin braced himself for twenty questions about his panic attack but instead Neil simply asked, “Did you watch the Trojans game from Monday yet?”

“Obviously,” Kevin drawled, confused yet relieved by the context switch. “I watched it live.” Instead of going to Seth’s funeral, he didn’t add. He wouldn’t have been welcome anyway.

“Want to watch it again after this?” Kevin wasn’t sure at first why Neil was trying to derail their plans until he glanced down at his traitorous hands trembling on his thighs.

“We need to prep,” Kevin reminded him firmly. Honestly, he doubted he could take in any information with the way his brain felt like mush from the leftover residue of fear. Neil saw right through him. When he wiped the cut on his abdomen, Kevin sucked in a sharp breath through the stinging.

“We can do it tomorrow.” Neil tossed the bloodied cloth into the sink and ripped open a new bandage. “It’s not like you don’t know the Terrapins inside out already. Hold still.”

Kevin tensed up as Neil applied the bandage for him, “I’m not doing this for my sake, you know. You’re the one that needs the prep.”

“And you need to chill out before you give yourself an aneurysm. At least lie down until you’re not shaking anymore.” Neil handed him a large faded t-shirt, and Kevin’s numb paperweight hands struggled to pull it on smoothly. He supposed Neil had a point, though he loathed to admit it. He stayed silent instead.

“Go wash your hands.” Neil instructed, and Kevin stood gingerly to follow him over to the sink. All grip in his fingers had left his body with the remnants of his adrenaline rush and he couldn’t turn the faucet on. Neil sighed and did it for him, before grabbing the soap and lathering it up in his hands.

“Do you usually get this bad?” Neil asked.

“Usually it’s worse,” Kevin admitted.

“What started it?”

Kevin tried to pinpoint it. He didn’t want to admit that Seth’s death had affected him but it was hard to deny. Reminders of his time at Edgar Allan had been insidiously creeping up on him all day. The black ribbons decorating every surface on campus in mourning had been the benign start of it. Seth’s furniture disappearing from the dorm and discovering the remnants of his ghost lingering in the washroom wasn’t unlike how Riko dealt with teammates he grew bored of. Andrew turning a knife on him—like Riko had done many times before—had been the final push, but it wasn’t until he was alone and surrounded by the reminders of the day that it really hit him.

He eventually settled on vaguely motioning at the tangle of red and black shirts on the floor. Neil kicked them out of view.

“Come here,” Neil took Kevin’s right hand into his own and firmly massaged the soap into his fingers. He meticulously rubbed along Kevin’s nail beds to buff off the last of the tacky blood. Kevin watched numbly as it swirled down the drain.

He wanted to ask why Neil was doing this for him, and even though he felt like he knew the answer, he didn’t really want to hear it lest it betrayed how false he feared it was. He wondered what motive Neil could possibly have if this was all still an act like Andrew thought. There was nothing stopping him from just peacing out and getting Aaron or Nicky to deal with Kevin instead.

Neil lathered up his hands again and was reaching for Kevin’s left. Kevin’s mouth moved quickly in an attempt to delay the contact.

“Why were you speaking to me in French earlier?”

“You were repeating yourself and you wouldn’t respond to anything else.” Neil stated simply, and took his hand. Kevin’s heart clenched painfully at both the answer and the sight of his scarred hand being held between Neil’s fingertips.

“What was I saying?”

“I'm sorry.”

It was hard to say who he thought he was apologising to, or why. Possibly Riko, maybe Jean. Probably both. He didn’t want to consider that his subconscious might have meant it for Seth. He was glad that Neil didn’t press him for answers, and instead towelled off his wet hands for him. It was weird how he had agonized for nearly two hours over holding Neil’s hand during a movie, and now they were doing something arguably much more intimate.

Afterwards, Neil led him through to the small kitchenette and gave him a cup of water to sip at. Kevin tried sitting but discovered the cut pulled at an uncomfortable angle when he did, so chose to stand instead. Neil hopped up on the kitchen counter and started up a casual one-man commentary on the Trojan’s game to fill the echo in the room. The more Neil recalled it, the more tempting it sounded to blow off their prep for the night in favour for rewatching the game. Knox really _had_ scored an impossible goal, and honestly if he thought about it, watching the replays _could_ count as research. They would have to play against them at some point, so it was still useful.

But even if he had just had a panic attack and should be taking it easy, they still had a game to win on Friday. Checking out Knox’s ass—er, goals—could wait until later. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. If his brain was ready to drift into _that_ kind of territory, he was mentally recovered enough to focus on preparing instead.

“We’ve already wasted enough time. We should at least look at profiles tonight.”

“It’s past midnight.” Neil pointed out, as if watching a ninety minute game with a fifteen minute halftime break and at least a half hour of post game analysis would have been a better use of their time.

“If you're tired I’ll just do it on my own.”

“I’m fine,” Neil argued, “But are you?”

“Yes.” And it was true this time. “It only stings if I’m hunched over.”

“Do you think it’ll be okay if you’re laying down?”

Kevin shrugged, unsure. Neil hopped off the counter and paused at the doorway to make sure Kevin was following him. His quiet insistence to stay by his side was comforting in the wake of his panic attack. Not many people knew how to handle them, but Neil’s calm navigation of each stage suggested this wasn’t his first rodeo. Since coming to Palmetto, usually Wymack or Andrew helped him through previous episodes, but their rough methods left something to be desired and sometimes even worsened or prolonged the attacks. Neil had managed to pull him out way faster and smoother than he had thought possible.

He led him through to the bedroom, picking up Kevin’s laptop along the way, then gestured to the top bunk. Kevin averted his eyes from the empty space where Seth’s bed would have been, and climbed up to get settled. Neil passed him up his laptop and pulled himself up the railing in one smooth movement. Kevin’s heart unexpectedly squirmed up into his throat when Neil got comfortable on his side next to him. There wasn’t quite enough space on the narrow mattress for them to lie shoulder to shoulder.

His brain decided to then inappropriately remind him that it had been a while since he’d shared a bed with someone else. Going from the Ravens where he had ready access to regular discreet encounters in the Nest where he only needed to kick out one roommate, to being on the Foxes where the media hounded his every move looking for a story _and_ sharing a room with three other guys made hooking up difficult. Dan’s first rule of college—never waste an empty dorm room—unhelpfully pushed its way to the forefront of his mind. It was thanks to her that Matt wasn’t currently in the bunk below them, after all.

He placed his laptop in his lap to hide the tent forming there. He felt conflicted about the fact he suddenly felt reluctant to spend time researching for an Exy game. Neil was a terrible distraction next to him and he doubted he’d be able to absorb any information with him this close.

“Kevin?”

“What?”

“I asked you if you’re fine here or if you want to sit on the couch instead.”

“No, this is okay. It doesn’t hurt that much.” It would hurt tomorrow once he had his heavy armour on over it, though.

He hit the power button and waited for his laptop to slowly wake up. Neil propped his head up on a hand next to him. Kevin couldn’t decide if he admired Neil’s ability to appear completely unphased by their proximity and locale, or if he hated him for it.

“Do you have any info on Herrera? Coach reckons he’ll be my backliner mark in the first half.”

“Yeah, I’ve got everyone’s files, hold on.”

After he typed in his password and hit enter, his desktop loaded. His internet browser flashed up to reveal a screen full of Neil Josten’s face and a hundred different tabs open to searches with his name. Neil made a choking noise next to him and Kevin instantly slammed his laptop shut.  
  
All heat drained out of the air and was replaced by a frigid silence.  
“What was that?”  
  
Neil’s voice was quiet and carefully controlled. It sat precariously on a razor sharp edge and Kevin’s brain raced to search for an explanation but it couldn’t reach his mouth.  
  
“Why were you searching for pictures of me?”

Neil sat up fully, white knuckles gripping the railing of his bunk. He looked like he was one wrong word away from leaping over the rail and running for good. Kevin ignored the protest from his abs as he propped himself up. His pettiness made a desperate bid to throw back in his face that he knew Neil had a binder full of photos of him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it when Neil looked as frightened as he did. His stomach twisted uncomfortably as he considered honesty. It felt like it was his only option.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since Eden’s,” he admitted. It sounded awkward and clunky and absolutely untrue coming out of his mouth.

“Bullshit.” Neil snapped. “I know you only kissed me because you were drunk.”

“That’s not true.”

“You were completely wasted. You had thirteen drinks in an hour and a half. You honestly can’t expect me to believe you would have done that sober.”

“I would have.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I would,” Kevin insisted, “Yeah, okay, I was drunk at the time. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been obsessing over it since then.”

Neil’s face twisted into something uncertain, “Why?”

“Because I want to kiss you again.”

Neil hesitated. His grip flexed on the railing twice as he considered his response, and then he replied quietly.

“Prove it.”

Kevin didn’t need to be told twice. He cupped Neil’s chin and caught Neil’s mouth with his own. Neil’s disbelief and hesitance quickly lost out to his eagerness as he leaned up and wrapped his arms around Kevin’s neck to kiss him back. How Andrew could think that Neil wasn’t interested when he kissed with this much enthusiasm baffled him. He couldn’t have looked very closely when he had caught them in Eden’s.

Without the club music drowning out his senses, the quiet echo of the hollow bedroom made this kiss all the more intimate. The heavy bass line of Kevin’s heart thrummed in his ears and battered against his ribcage longing for escape. Neil’s mouth was as demanding as he remembered it, yet now he could appreciate it in full sobriety. Kevin pressed into it until he felt gravity take hold and drag them both down to bed.

Having Neil underneath him wasn’t something he had put much thought into before, but now it was burned into his memory for life. He dug an elbow into the blankets to hold himself up so he could admire his kiss-swollen lips and messy hair splayed out on the pillow around him. He looked like an entirely different being from the determined man who stood by his side on court. The only thing that would have completed the transformation was if Neil had taken out the brown contacts he insisted on wearing every day.

Neil squirmed under his inspection, either impatient to get back to kissing or uncomfortable under his scrutiny. Holding himself up over Neil was tricky, as the strain caused a ripple of pain to tremble along the wound on his abdomen. His expression must have betrayed him, because Neil’s hand was under his shirt a second later, brushing over the bandage to check for blood.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

“Not sure.” Kevin grimaced, and complied when Neil pushed at his shoulder to get him to roll off of him and onto his back. Neil knelt next to him as he peeled his shirt up to check.

“Looks okay,” he reported, and then peered up at Kevin, “Want to keep going?”

“Fuck yes,” he breathed.

Neil’s grin in response was devious. With a jerk of his hands he tugged Matt’s shirt up over Kevin’s shoulders, and left it abandoned around his elbows above his head. Kevin tried to wriggle free but the fabric was bunched up at an awkward place that was hard to grab at.

“Hey—” Neil cut off his protest with another kiss, and then used their pause for breath to climb on top of him. He settled down on his lap and Kevin groaned into his mouth as Neil deliberately ground his ass against his clothed erection. For someone who didn’t drink, didn’t dust and didn’t dance, Kevin would have never expected Neil to be this forward or dominant in bed. Not that he minded, really. He was very much okay with what was happening, unexpected as it was.

As Neil got sidetracked from his lips to his neck, Kevin finally managed to get enough purchase on the sleeve of Matt’s shirt to pull it off his arms entirely and toss it over the side of the bunk. He dragged his fingers down Neil’s back, reining him in as he arched into the touch and returned to his mouth willingly. Kevin asserted himself by giving Neil’s butt a firm squeeze. Neil laughed against his lips, until Kevin’s hands roamed to hike up the back of Neil’s shirt. Then he froze.

“Wait,” Neil huffed, turning his face away. Kevin smeared a kiss across his cheek and jaw before he registered what he had said. Neil sat up straight to clench his hands around Kevin’s wrists, directing them out from under his sweater and back down to his ass.

“Here.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Kevin laughed, but complied anyway, “Don’t you want to take that off?”

“How about I take this off instead?” Neil suggested, hands moving to his fly. Kevin could only watch in awe as Neil dropped his jeans to the floor a minute later, and resettled on his lap in a thin pair of boxerbriefs. Kevin bit his lip as he slid his hands up the tight muscle of Neil’s runner thighs.

“Yeah, that’s good too.”

Neil’s hands settled between his legs on the button of Kevin’s jeans. He merely cocked an eyebrow at him in question. Kevin nodded and lifted his hips, and Neil made quick work of shoving his jeans down his thighs before taking his rightful place back on top of him. Even through the fabric, Neil’s ass was warm and firm and just the exact pressure he wanted against his dick. When Neil began to rock and rut against him, Kevin couldn’t stop himself from thrusting upwards.

“Fuck,” he hissed, and Neil pushed his hips back down to the bed. A concerned hand went to his bandage again. Neil cursed quietly.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” he suggested, and Kevin leaned up to see what he meant. The bandage on his abs was pricked with red.

“Are you kidding me?” Kevin groaned and flopped back to the mattress. He couldn’t believe Andrew was inadvertently cockblocking him again. The man had an infuriating talent.

“It’s shallow enough that it should scab over by tomorrow. Definitely by gametime Friday, but if you keep tearing it open…” Neil trailed off. Kevin wasn’t sure who made him the expert on knife wounds, but he couldn’t deny his logic.

“I could just stay really, really still.”

Neil’s laugh held a mocking edge. “Can you?”

“I can try.”

Neil paused to consider it for a moment. He rolled his hips so slowly and casually as he thought, that Kevin was certain he might die right there underneath him.

“I don’t have a condom.” Neil eventually admitted.

“Does Matt?”

“Don’t know where he keeps them. Don’t you have any?”

“In my wallet. In my room.” Where Andrew was. “Didn’t exactly plan on… this, tonight.”

“Me neither.” Neil mused, and then shifted to sit further down Kevin’s thighs. Kevin groaned as he missed the contact immediately, but then Neil’s hand was slipping into his boxers and pulling him free. Kevin shuddered a sigh of relief as he started to jerk him off, and his hands roamed to find Neil’s thighs again. He couldn’t quite reach much more of him, so he simply laid back and let Neil take control. After the teasing and foreplay had gone on for so long, he didn’t last. His core tightened as he came, and he clutched at his bandage desperately in the hopes to lessen the pain underneath.

“This was such a bad idea,” Neil muttered as he tucked Kevin away.

“I know.” Kevin pulled his hand away to check for red on his fingertips. They were clean. He looked back to Neil. He didn’t seem to be making any movements to deal with himself, so Kevin assumed they were done for the night. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Fucking hell.” Neil snorted a short, disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, okay. Bring your stuff next time.”

“I will.” Kevin tried to lean up for a kiss. Neil pushed him down to save him the effort, and planted a small one on the corner of his mouth.

“Go clean up and go back to your own room,” he ordered. “I have class in seven hours.”

Riding the high of his endorphin rush, the climb down from Neil’s bunk and washing himself off in the bathroom wasn’t as difficult as he feared. He fetched his navy shirt from the bathroom floor, pulled it back on and realised in hindsight that Seth’s old shirt had actually been more of a coral pink than a red. He took a minute to straighten out his hair and check his neck for hickeys; thankfully Neil hadn’t left any. Explaining them to anyone, especially the press on Friday, would have been a nightmare.

Neil met him back at the front door and handed him his laptop.

“Be more careful next time you decide to make a spank bank.”

Kevin grinned. “Worked out for me this time, didn’t it?”

“Shut up and go to bed.” Neil’s hand hooked around the back of his neck to pull him down for one more quick kiss, and then he shoved him out the door.

As he heard the door lock shut behind him, he couldn’t keep the self satisfied smirk off his face. For months, he had been making a huge deal out of nothing. Andrew’s mindgames had predisposed him to overthinking and not relying on his instincts, like he should have when he first found out Neil was interested in him. Kevin smiled and made the short trek back to his own dorm. Maybe everything was going to work out after all.


	5. The Secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out so long that I've had to add another two chapters, so it will finish on chapter 8 instead of 6! Oh, and I've also had to increase the rating to E.
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Explicit sex, descriptions of scars and references to Jean's abuse. No panic attacks this time!

It escalated quickly.

It didn’t occur to Kevin that he should have made an attempt to slow things down with Neil. Nor that it might not have been a good idea to instigate a no-strings-attached arrangement with someone who was meant to be his teammate for the next four years.

It didn’t occur to him because, from Kevin’s perspective, it was completely normal.

The Edgar Allan Ravens weren’t allowed to socialise outside of the team, so naturally they all exclusively slept with one another. That was the only life Kevin had known until nine months ago. When Kevin joined the Palmetto Foxes and discovered that not only Seth and Allison were together, but Matt and Dan as well, with potentially Andrew and Renee in the works, it just made sense. That was just what collegiate teams did. You studied together, you ate together, you trained together and you slept together. It was the natural progression of living in each other’s pockets.

As for things going too fast—well, as far as he was concerned, he was just matching the pace Neil was setting.

If Kevin had bothered to befriend anyone, maybe he would have had someone to confide in who could have warned him that what he was doing was a very bad idea. The problem was, with his hands full trying to shape the Foxes into a team worthy of their Class I status, he had naturally ostracized himself from the majority of the team. Most of the time, he didn’t mind. He was here to win, not to make friends. But he couldn’t deny the fact that it hurt when he occasionally got the sense that Nicky and Aaron only tolerated him for Andrew’s sake.

Andrew was the closest thing to a friend Kevin had, but he was the last person he could have gone to with this. Andrew had explicitly told Kevin not to get involved with Neil after breaking off their deal. He had already punished him enough for catching them kissing. He didn’t want to imagine what Andrew would do if he knew what more they had done, and what they were planning on doing as soon as they got back to the dorm that night.

Later, Kevin realised, he could have spoken to Betsy about everything. She probably would have helped him self-reflect and realise that stomping on the gas until it hit the footwell of his heart would potentially lead to the tailspin that would throw his life out of control. Perhaps if he organised regular sessions with her like he was meant to, he would have thought about that sooner.

When Kevin got home from class on Thursday, Andrew was nowhere to be found. Other than at their afternoon practice, Kevin hadn’t spoken to him since their fight the night before. Andrew had mostly behaved himself in goal, so they never really had much reason to interact. Without Seth around, the rest of the team seemed to fall into place, just as Kevin had predicted. So instead he was able to focus on pushing Neil relentlessly on the strikers’ line. Neil already had enough years of missed practice to catch up on without the added pressure of the whole Exy world watching him as well. Neil was showing promising improvement, which made Kevin’s time investment in him feel rewarding on its own. Yelling at him on the court also helped ease Kevin’s niggling worry in the back of his mind that anyone might suspect there was something going on between them.

Last night, Kevin had snuck back to his room in the dark and slipped into his bunk without waking anyone in the room. Nicky and Aaron were acting completely normal with him, but Andrew had been gone when he woke in the morning, which was unusual considering his drugs usually made him groggy. After practice, they hadn’t crossed paths on campus either. He had an inkling that Andrew was avoiding him so Kevin couldn’t ask him to take them to night practice again. Kevin wondered if he should count himself lucky, because he couldn’t afford to end up with a second knife wound that night.

Thankfully, Neil had been right about the cut, and after a full night’s rest it had scabbed over and began to heal. It hadn’t hurt as much as he had expected during practice either. Which was good, because it meant once Neil opened the door to his dorm and stated that Matt was out, Kevin could pin him to the wall and kiss him breathless.

“Holy shit.” Neil gasped when he pulled back. He finished closing the door and his hand blindly patted around to lock it. “Hello to you too?”

“Hi.” Kevin stated formally, and released the fist he had made in the front of Neil’s Palmetto Foxes pullover. He smoothed out the crinkles in their team’s logo with a swipe of his hand. “I’ve been wanting to do that since you landed that triple during drills today.”

A smug little grin wriggled onto Neil’s lips. “That was pretty good, wasn’t it.”

“For an amateur, yeah. You still have a long way to go if you want to make finals.”

“Fuck you.”

“I thought the plan was to fuck _you_.” Kevin cocked an eyebrow at him, and Neil gave him a playful shove backwards.

“I thought the plan was to prepare for our game against the Terrapins tomorrow,” Neil reminded him and tugged Kevin’s laptop out of his hand. The only thing Kevin liked more than Neil’s mouth was his dedication to Exy.

“Yeah, let’s do that first.”

Kevin made himself comfortable on the couch while Neil made quick work of connecting the laptop to the TV. When Neil went to take a seat, Kevin caught him by the hips, spinning him and pulling him down to sit in his lap. An indignant noise caught in Neil’s throat but dissolved as Kevin tucked a kiss into the crook of his neck. The TV vied for attention as the recording of Belmonte University’s last home game jittered to life on the screen. There was a clatter as Neil abandoned the remote and slotted his hands over Kevin’s on his hips.

“We should watch this,” Neil said half-heartedly.

“I’m not stopping you,” Kevin suggested as he casually rolled his hips up against Neil’s ass.

“Yeah, but you’re being very—ah—distracting.”

“You’ll need to concentrate through more than this when you’re on the court,” Kevin pointed out.

“I hope you’re not planning on fucking me on court during the game,” Neil grumbled, “I’m pretty sure that’s against regulations.”

“Not _during_ the game, but…” Kevin trailed off. Someone as obsessed with Exy as Neil would have one of two thoughts about sex on court: it was either sacrilege, or the ultimate kink.

“Fuck.” Neil’s breathy response confirmed it was the latter. “Have you ever? On the court?”

“No.” Not for lack of desire. Getting time apart from Riko had been hard enough. Getting the Ravens’ home court empty and without security cameras catching him was impossible. The Foxhole court wasn’t as sophisticated, however. Kevin’s hand escaped from Neil’s grasp and slid up his chest to hook into the crew neck collar of his sweatshirt. He had barely attempted to tug it to the side so he could continue kissing onto his shoulder when Neil stopped his wrist in a deathgrip.

“I want to kiss you.” Neil tried to twist and turn around.

“I thought you wanted to watch the game.”

“I do.” He sounded conflicted about it.

“Then focus.” Kevin ordered. Neil released his grip and relaxed when Kevin dropped his hands down to rest on Neil’s thighs. He was easily the fastest on their team and his legs were formidable, a marvellous strength under his grip. He absently stroked along them as he watched the pregame commentary over Neil’s shoulder. It had only just finished and the starting buzzer sounded when he slipped between Neil’s thighs to palm at his crotch. Neil’s willpower caved in and he pressed up against him needily. They barely made it to the Terrapin’s first goal before Neil gave up and squirmed out of his lap to stand up.

“Screw it.” Neil turned to face him, unzipping his jeans hastily and kicking them off to the side. Kevin pulled his own shirt over his head and got up to remove his jeans too. He was yanked down by the back of the neck into a hard kiss, all teeth and tongue and zero hesitance. Neil was the hand in Kevin’s glove, disguised as something small and in need of protection, but really he was the puppeteer behind Kevin’s every move. There were no strings attached to Kevin, but if Neil so much as pinched the air around him, they both knew he would dance.

Kevin’s belt clacked as it hit the floor and his fingers roamed for something else to remove. They slipped under the hem of Neil’s sweatshirt but Neil’s hands redirected them immediately to the waistband of his boxer briefs instead. Kevin sucked in a breath as he hooked his fingertips into the elastic and snapped it against Neil’s skin. Neil seemed unperturbed, more interested in mouthing along his throat. Kevin gave his waistband another tug and began to drag it down over the swell of his ass.

“You’re not even watching anymore,” Kevin teased.

The TV erupted with cheers from the audience. Neil replied without turning around, “Herrera just intercepted a shot on goal.” The commentators echoed Neil’s statement a second later. Kevin let Neil’s underwear drop to the floor.

“How did you—”

“Watched it during a free block earlier.” Neil kicked his discarded clothes to the side. “I had a feeling we’d get distracted. You brought the stuff, didn’t you?”

Kevin had never been more attracted to another human being in his entire life. He nodded dumbly, temporarily forgetting how to use words as he gestured at his jeans. Neil pushed him back down to the couch, took what they needed out of his pocket and then climbed on top of him. He busied himself with opening up the lube, and Kevin slipped his hands up his sides, hiking up his oversized sweatshirt. He revealed his blushing cock and a slash of pale scar tissue on his abdomen before Neil slapped his hands away and viciously tugged his shirt back down.

“Don’t.” His confidence locked up and his expression closed off.

Kevin frowned. “Why do you want to keep this on so badly?”

“I’m cold.”

“Liar.”

“Does it matter?” Neil spat.

“I don’t care about your scars, Neil.” Neil tensed up, as if half of the team hadn’t clocked on to what he was hiding months ago. “You don’t need to cover them.”

Neil’s voice cracked when he responded, “I don’t want you to see them.”

“Why not? You see mine every day.” His left hand tightened on Neil’s hip.

“It’s different. Just drop it, Kev.”

The nickname stirred something old in Kevin’s gut and he stopped. Nobody else had the rapport with him anymore to call him by a half-name. Not for years. Neil started to pull away, but he caught his sleeve before he could get up.

“Fine. Keep it on.” He had it. He was so close to figuring Neil out, and he knew the last piece he needed.

“But take your contacts out.”

Neil jerked his sleeve from his grip and got off the couch. He wasn’t fast enough to hide the mix of emotions that swirled over his face like cans of paint being knocked over. Confusion, disbelief, shame and regret all stained the canvas, leaving a muddy mark that almost looked like fear, which made no sense since Kevin had seen Neil without his contacts twice before at Eden’s. He was nearly about to call the whole thing off when Neil replied.

“Okay.”

He disappeared into the washroom before Kevin could reply. Was he asking for too much? Why did these requests bother Neil when he had no qualms about stripping everything else off? He pinched the bridge of his nose, head pounding with the swarm of doubt. Neil was so hot and cold with him that he was impossible to read. When Neil took charge, Kevin didn’t have to think about whether he was doing the right thing. But it felt like he couldn’t take a step without tripping over something else in Neil’s minefield of issues.

Neil took so long that the game they had been watching went to half time. Kevin started pulling his jeans back on, assuming the night was over. He stopped when Neil returned, blue eyed and purposeful as he walked over to shove Kevin back down.

The Neil from Wednesday night climbed on top of him and straddled his thighs. Kevin had a hundred questions and opened his mouth but Neil sealed his hand over it. Any hint of the emotions that had spilled out before had been burned away with paint stripper and only Neil’s raw determination was left behind. Neil let him stare, handing him this last puzzle piece and waited for his conclusion.

But eyes from a past life and a half name on his tongue wasn’t enough to complete the picture. Neil continued to be an enigma out of his reach even as he sat exposed in his lap. Kevin was so exasperated with teetering on that edge of familiarity that he finally resigned. It was impossible that he had met someone like Neil Josten and forgotten him. The feeling of knowing, _remembering_ , that had clawed at him for months had to be a fantasy, a fabrication of his mind desperately trying to repackage his infatuation into something he could accept.

He closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged as he gave up. Neil’s lips pressed against Kevin’s temple, then ghosted over his tattoo. The unexpected intimacy ripped a shiver from his spine. He’d been with fans before and they had never dared to get so close to the symbol of his court status. It was a strange powermove from Neil, and even though Kevin knew about his binder of photos, it showed Neil wasn’t just a starstruck groupie. He stomach still twisted with discomfort, because the last person to have touched his face there was Riko.

He was given something better to think about when Neil replaced the hand over his mouth with his lips. Neil passed the lube to Kevin and guided him back to his thighs. He took the invitation and slowly slid up his legs until he finally squeezed his ass. Neil chuckled into his mouth and the doubt that had settled in Kevin’s veins thawed.

“So, how do you want to do this?”

“I don’t care. Just get on it with it,” Neil demanded as the buzzer on the TV sounded for the second half of the game they were meant to be watching. “It’s been nearly an hour.”

“Impatient little shit,” Kevin hoisted him up easily and tossed him down onto the couch. Neil tugged the hem of his sweatshirt into place but otherwise bent his knees accommodatingly as Kevin crawled between them. Neil’s cocky grin only lasted until Kevin slipped a lubed up finger between his cheeks and stroked at his hole. Watching his mouth go slack with want felt like scoring a goal. When he pushed inside to the knuckle and Neil’s head dropped back to the armrest to let out a shuddered breath, he felt victorious. He leaned down to whisper into his ear.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

Neil groaned around a ‘yes’ and started rocking against him, but then stopped suddenly.

“Wait.”

Kevin stopped too. “Wait?”

“If you fuck me that hard I won’t be able to _play_ tomorrow.”

The only thing Kevin hated more than Neil’s mouth was his dedication to Exy.

“Are you serious?” Neil gave a pointed look at Kevin’s cock straining against his boxers. He would have been smug about the unsaid big dick compliment if it hadn’t just blue balled him after an hour of foreplay. He quickly scrambled for an idea that wouldn’t end the night right then and there.

“What if I go slow?”

Neil snorted. “Was that why you wanted my contacts out? So you can look me in the eye while you make slow, romantic love to me?”

“Well, you’re the one who’s _in_ love with me.” Kevin retorted, frustrated as he gestured with his free hand. “Is that what you want?”

Neil didn’t reply. He looked away, and eventually, he shrugged. His silence was damning.

Kevin stared at him in shock. He couldn’t believe Neil had actually told Andrew the truth. Until this point, he was certain that it was an exaggeration, said for dramatic effect in the heat of the moment. He thought that Neil’s attraction to him was just as surface level as his was in return. He wouldn’t have let things get this far if he had known it was serious for Neil. He looked down to see Neil’s fingers fidgeting nervously with the hem of his oversized sweatshirt. The way the sleeves eclipsed his palms made him look even smaller than he was. He had already given him so much, in trust and vulnerability alone, that he felt responsible to return it somehow.

Kevin was a mess of post-traumatic stress disorder and his inflexible dedication to Exy would always come first. He saw very little left to genuinely love, other than an athlete’s body and a model’s face, but if Neil could accept that, then he could at least give him what he wanted for tonight.

“Alright,” Kevin conceded. He pulled out only enough to add more lube, and then slowly began fingering him again. Neil answered by rolling his hips into it as they haphazardly blundered past his silent confession. His restlessness was palpable as he slid his hands up Kevin’s arms and over his chest. He eventually hooked them around the back of his neck and pulled him down for another kiss, just as bruising and needy as the ones before. He nipped at Kevin’s lower lip sharply before demanding a second finger. Kevin obliged happily, but once he brushed against his prostate, Neil couldn’t really coordinate well enough to keep up a kiss anymore. He mouthed a sloppy line down Kevin’s neck instead, teeth scraping his shoulder. It was a pleasant distraction from the jitter in Kevin’s arm where he was keeping himself propped up over Neil. When Kevin eventually introduced a third finger, Neil bit down hard. Kevin swore.

“Too much?”

“It’s fine,” Neil gritted out. It didn’t sound very convincing. “You’re taking forever.”

“That’s because you’re so fucking tight,” Kevin snapped back.

“Well, obviously.” Neil snarked. Kevin paused, three fingers knuckle deep. He didn’t know what ‘obviously’ meant. He had no idea what Neil’s experience was, and he wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t ready to shoulder the responsibility of knowing this was Neil’s first time, or if it had just been a while and he was going to be difficult to impress.

Neil picked up on his hesitance and agitated him. “Can you get on with it?”

“Do you want to limp onto court tomorrow or what?” Kevin ground out and curled his fingers. Neil jolted and made a small noise in surprise. His knuckles were white where they were gripping Kevin’s biceps.

“Do that again,” he gasped, attitude gone. Kevin indulged him and earned another unexpected noise, an octave higher than Neil’s normal tone. It would have been cute if it wasn’t so indecent. He coaxed another few sounds out of him until Neil’s hand stalled his wrist. Kevin stopped, and Neil had to catch his breath before speaking up.

“I’m ready.”

Even though he must have been expecting it, Neil still made a face at the sudden emptiness when Kevin pulled out. Kevin’s fingers were too slippery to open the condom, and he realised in hindsight that he should have put it on sooner. Neil’s antagonism caused him to skip steps and made him look like a blundering idiot when he _knew_ what he was doing. He fumed when Neil took the foil packet from him and tore it open effortlessly.

Neil looked at him like he was a moron. “You going to take those off at any point?”

Kevin’s hand jerked instinctively to flip Neil off before he sat back to wrestle his boxers off. They landed on the floor somewhere and then Neil was rolling the condom onto him. He didn’t mind getting the help so much anymore when Neil slicked up his hand and gave him a few short pumps to get started. After going for so long without touching himself, it felt incredible. It also made him doubt how long he’d be able to last once he was inside Neil.

Neil laid back and watched him expectantly. Kevin pinched the base of his dick in the hopes that he wouldn’t nut early and slowly started to push in. Neil’s tight hole resisted, Kevin’s velvety head pushing uselessly against the tight ring of muscle at first until suddenly it popped in. Neil released a sigh like he had been holding his breath.

“Okay?” Kevin checked. Absently, his thumb caressed his thigh. Neil nodded in response, uncharacteristically quiet. Their eyes locked and Kevin couldn’t bring himself to look away. He sank into him agonisingly slowly, only pausing when Neil bore down on him halfway in. He pulled back to do a shallow little thrust and managed to get a little deeper.

“Try to relax,” he coaxed him. His entire body was still wound up like a coil, so Kevin tried distracting him with a kiss. It worked, because once his tongue was in his mouth, he was sheathed inside Neil up to the hilt.

He stayed still at first, giving Neil some time to adjust to the stretch. Their foreheads knocked gently and their noses brushed as they shared a breath. Pulling out felt like trying to escape a Chinese finger trap. When Kevin sat back with only just his head still inside him, it took everything he had to not just ram back into him at full power. Pushing back in slowly was like wading upstream against the current. Kevin felt like he was going to explode.

It got easier the more they did it. Neil eventually picked up the kiss again, but it was soft and lazy unlike the hurried kisses they had shared before. The languid way they were having sex was overwhelmingly domestic. None of Kevin’s previous experiences even remotely lined up to what he was doing now, and with each thrust he felt himself getting a little bit more uncertain that it wasn’t ‘making love’ like Neil had mocked. Knowing Neil felt something for him made his body sluggish and his heart work double time in order to move.

“Can you go faster?” Neil’s belligerent tone startled him out of his thoughts. It sparked against the gas of Kevin’s temper and he snapped his hips forward so hard that Neil’s chest jumped and his throat betrayed him a high pitched noise. Instant gratification began to ebb away to the burn of regret for his lack of self control, until Neil grunted again.

“Yeah, like that.”

This was something Kevin could do. He sat back, the space he created between him and Neil buoying his sense of self. He pulled out and flipped Neil over, guiding him to elbows and knees. There wasn’t a game tomorrow anymore when he pushed back in and relentlessly fucked him from behind. Sweat pooled between his palms and the ridges of Neil’s hip bones. Neil folded over, head dropping to pillow on one arm in an attempt to muffle the string of noises jumping out of him.

The angle caused his sweatshirt to slip up his back, exposing an extensive patchwork of scars years old. Kevin’s heart clenched. He knew Neil was hiding scarring of some description, but his shame and adamancy to hide it made him assume it had been something self inflicted. This was not. Mottled skin that made it looked like he’d been dragged across tarmac dominated the majority of his left side, but that wasn’t what concerned him. Kevin was all too familiar with the way Jean’s collection of knife wounds looked when they healed incorrectly, and Neil was covered in them.

“Fuck—” Neil keened below him, and Kevin realised too late that Neil had been jerking himself off. He dragged Kevin in with him as he shuddered through his release, and he wasn’t for long after. Kevin collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the couch. He could feel Neil’s bunched up sweatshirt press into his ribs, a physical reminder of what he had just witnessed.

He stayed inside him as they both struggled for breath. Neil eventually groaned for Kevin to get off of him, using a few choice words in French that roughly translated to calling him a fatass. Incensed, Kevin pulled out without much ceremony and tugged Neil’s sweatshirt down for him at the same time. He scooped up his clothes and left Neil to consider what he might have seen as he went to the bathroom to clean himself up. He needed time to process everything himself.

He had read Neil’s file back when they decided to recruit him, and was familiar with Hernandez’s suspicions about his family life. Neil never changed out in front of his teammates back then either. Combined with the fact that Hernandez knew he slept in the locker rooms a few times a week and had never met his parents, he’d pieced together that Neil was likely avoiding returning to a broken home. Considering the recruitment criteria for the Foxes, he hadn’t really afforded much thought to it then. Once Neil was signed with the team, as long as he showed up to practice on time Kevin didn’t really care where he got changed and showered.

He just hadn’t realised how broken it was, and now his indifference was waning. If the scars were from the past year, he would have missed weeks of practice waiting for them to heal and he would have never made it through the season at Millport. That meant they were older, but it still left Kevin wondering how Neil managed to get whoever was hurting him to stop. He wanted to know who had done it, and why, and if they were locked up for good, and if Neil really was safe now.

It was no wonder Neil tried to hide his scars. Kevin had so many questions, and even if he knew better than to ask them, he knew others wouldn’t have the same tact. Shame flooded into his core like briny sea water as he played back each time he had reached for Neil’s shirt over the past two days. Neil always redirected his hands away and Kevin had misinterpreted it as eagerness for him to touch somewhere else, not a desperate attempt to shelter a secret.

When he returned to the lounge, Neil had changed into a faded t-shirt and a loose pair of shorts. He was sitting on the entertainment centre, the TV switched off behind him. Kevin’s laptop balanced on his couch-burned knees. Kevin winced. He hadn’t realised the fabric had been that rough under him. A glance at the couch revealed a damp spot where Neil had cleaned the evidence of their recent activity.

“We should talk about this,” Neil said. Kevin’s stomach twisted uncomfortably but then Neil turned the laptop around and gestured at the Belmonte profiles on the screen. The relief washed the last of Kevin’s energy away with it.

“Yeah. Let’s lay down though.”

Neil nodded and led the way back to his bed. It mirrored the night before, with Neil on his back and Kevin stretched out on his side next to him. For the first time they actually succeeded in revising, quizzing each other on their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and reeling off memorised data on their lineup. Kevin knew it off by heart already, which was a relief because the more he tried to focus on the screen, the more it blurred and the lines crossed over each other. Neil needed more time to review, and he fell quiet as he read through a particularly long player note. Kevin made the mistake of closing his eyes while he waited for him to finish.

-

He woke in the morning to the feeling of the mattress shifting next to him. Used to sleeping alone, that was disorienting enough. But when he opened his eyes it took him a dizzying moment to remember that he wasn’t in his own dorm. The familiar smell of cheap shampoo and the brush of soft hair under his chin clued him in as to where he was pretty quick. His chest was warm from where it was pressed up against Neil’s back, and one arm was dead from where it was curled under the pillow they had shared.

He stayed still as Neil moved next to him. He was peeling open a packet of brown contacts and putting them in without even using a mirror. The practised ease he did it with was unerring, like he had been doing it for years. Kevin couldn’t understand why he would hide such a striking colour underneath such a bland, everyday alternative.

“Why do you keep hiding them?” He mumbled, stifling a yawn into the back of Neil’s head.

Neil froze up, body going tense under the arm around his waist. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“Mmm, should I have prefaced that with a good morning, gorgeous?”

“Ha, ha. Funny.”

“I’m serious. I like your eyes. You shouldn’t cover them.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Your opinion is invalid.”

Neil twisted around to give him an annoyed look. Kevin used it as an opportunity to tug his dead arm out from under the pillow so he could massage life back into it. Neil smacked his hand away and began kneading his numb forearm to help. Kevin gave him a thankful look, but Neil’s eyes were lowered, focused on his task. The September sunrise caught his dyed black hair and gave it a reddish glow, washing his skin in a warm light. He seemed softer somehow, younger. It stirred that sense of remembering that Kevin still struggled with when he looked at Neil, but he had given up on chasing it last night, and he was far too drowsy to wrestle with it now. He let his eyes slip back shut.

“What time is it?” He figured napping was easier than facing his problems.

“Just after six.”

Kevin groaned and pressed his face into the pillow. “Jesus. Why are you awake so early?”

“Morning run.” His fingers moved down to massage his hand, and Kevin didn’t bother telling him that feeling had returned to his arm and it wasn’t necessary anymore.

“You’re nuts. We have a game tonight. Save your stamina so you don’t blow out your legs.”

Neil scoffed. “A run isn’t going to ruin me for tonight. I’ll be fine.”

“Use that boundless energy for something more productive,” Kevin meant drills.

Neil interpreted it differently, “What, you want a round two?”

Kevin squinted open an eye to look up at Neil. “Can you even walk after last night?”

Neil laughed. “That was nothing. I’ve been through worse.”

Kevin’s gut twisted, remembering the battlefield of scars he’d discovered last night. Clearly, Neil _had_ been through worse. Kevin tangled their fingers together to stop Neil from massaging his scarred hand. Neil’s expression faltered and he gave Kevin a considering look, the cocksure energy draining out of his smile.

“I know,” Kevin croaked.

Squeezing Neil’s hand gently, he tried for reassurance. But Neil tore his hand free and shoved the blanket off of them both to climb out of the bunk. Kevin leaned on the banister to watch him as he grabbed his running gear from the dresser. Neil paused at the door to the room and looked back up at him. His frame was rigid but he was forcing his face into a faltering mask of neutrality.

“We can do it again if we win tonight.”

“ _When_ we win tonight,” Kevin corrected him.

“Right.” Neil clenched his clothes in his hands tightly. “Now get out of my dorm before Matt finds you in my bed.”

Kevin didn’t particularly want to move, but he knew each minute he lingered in Neil’s sheets exponentially raised the chances of them getting caught. He’d already made a huge mistake by falling asleep in his room and not sneaking back like he had last time. He needed to figure out how to explain to his roommates where he’d been without raising suspicion—if they even noticed.

Considering how early it was, he could probably still get back in time before Aaron’s eight o’clock alarm went off. After all, Kevin prided himself on his discretion, and he had gone this long without getting caught by Riko, the press or other nosy Ravens. He could more than handle a couple of Foxes.

-

Nicky wolf-whistled the second Kevin entered his dorm.

“Kevin oh my Days, is that a hickey?” Nicky called from his desk. He was sat curled up with a blanket, a cup of coffee and an open Skype call with his long-distance boyfriend, Erik. Kevin had completely overlooked the fact that the time difference meant that Nicky often got up at the crack of dawn to speak to him on Erik’s lunch breaks.

Kevin slapped his hand to his neck to feel for bruising. He didn’t remember Neil leaving one, but—

“Other side, honey,” Nicky smirked at him from over his coffee, “Have a fun night? Who’s the lucky gal?”

“You don’t know her,” Kevin covered up quickly, and stalked off to the bathroom to end his line of questioning. Thankfully, Nicky’s suspicions would be off base since Kevin was still very deep in the closet. Nobody except for Jean knew about his disastrous exploration into his bisexuality, and he intended to keep it that way. Well, Neil knew now too. And so did Andrew.

Anyway, the last thing he needed was for the press to find out, and if someone as loose-lipped at Nicky knew it would only be a matter of time until it leaked. He didn’t need any more sensationalism added to his career. It was already convoluted enough that he was sure there’d be a Hollywood dramatisation of it by the time he was twenty five.

After showering, he wiped down the condensation on the mirror and checked his skin. There was a purpling crescent moon bruise of teeth marks in the crook of his neck. Touching it brought back the vivid memory of when Neil had given it to him last night. They had both been too preoccupied at the time to consider the repercussions of leaving evidence. It was too high up to be covered by a normal t-shirt, and it was too low down to be covered by his neck guard when they wore their uniforms later today.

Cursing Neil under his breath, he rifled through the medical cabinet until he found his stick of concealer and a small makeup palette. If there was one thing he had learned with the Ravens, it was how to cover up bruises. He and Jean had more than enough practice on each other. He made quick work of the mark on his neck, and patted down enough translucent powder on top to keep it from smudging. He just had to hope he wouldn’t sweat it off during practice. The palette would go in his bag for touch-ups, just in case.

Lingering at the mirror, his gaze drifted from his neck up to his tattoo. Pressing two fingers over it removed it from view. His skin crawled. Ironic, how he had spent the better half of two decades tracing and retracing this very mark onto his skin with marker, desperate for it to be a permanent symbol to the world that he belonged on the court. Now, it was just a heavy reminder of the vulture who had plucked apart his dirty soul like a carcass.

His hands moved without thinking, and after a minute he had smeared enough concealer on his face to cover the tattoo entirely. A green-eyed stranger stared back at him. A nobody.

He recalled Neil’s lips tracing over his left cheekbone. Without this mark, Neil would have never been interested in him. Andrew wouldn’t have considered their deal of getting him invested in Exy. His teammates wouldn’t tolerate him half as long as they did now. Wymack probably wouldn’t have recruited him. Other teams wouldn’t respect him.

He scrubbed the makeup off his face and left. He had a game to prepare for.


	6. The Mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting so long for this chapter. Seven is already done, so it'll be up in the next week or two. :)
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Sexual content

The second match of the season was an away game against Belmonte University’s Terrapins. They weren’t ranked as highly as Breckenridge, but between Seth being dead, Allison barely holding together, and Wymack’s insane roster solution, Kevin figured Belmonte would pose as much of a challenge, if not more.

The six hour drive to Nashville was uncomfortable. From Kevin’s spot at the back of the bus, he could see Allison resting her head on Renee’s shoulder as she slipped between napping and crying quietly, if the way her shoulders shook under Renee’s arm said anything. Kevin found her premature return to the team unsettling. She showed up dressed to the nines like her usual self, but that only highlighted the deadness in her eyes. He knew better than anyone that the adrenaline rush of an Exy match could numb the pain of grief for an hour, but the exhaustion and endorphin withdrawal on the way home might break her for good.

That, of course, was only assuming she’d get through the match in the first place. It wasn't a problem if the Terrapins decided to target her, if anything it would give her something to focus on and get angry about. Kevin’s real fear lied outside of the court, the one place referees couldn’t control: the audience. After he transferred from the Ravens and began coaching at Palmetto, his betrayed ‘fans’ started bringing signs to his matches filled with vitriol so bad it made him sick. If there were any signs in the crowd referencing Seth’s death, it might be enough to tip Allison over the edge during the game. If she was smart, she’d keep her head down, focus on the court and never look past the plexiglass.

He wished he could offer her some words of advice or strength before the game. But he had no right to talk to her. The only reason why the Ravens had moved south was because of him. If Kevin hadn’t joined the Foxes, Seth wouldn’t be dead.

Kevin still couldn’t decide if Seth’s removal from the team was a blessing or a curse. Every practice they had since showed how much better they were working together, but that didn’t change the reality that they were down in numbers and now were at the mercy of Wymack’s substitution plan. He didn’t doubt Dan’s ferocity on the striker line, he knew she could handle it. He knew the team could compensate for Renee’s lack of experience playing dealer, but his real issue was the fact that she wouldn’t be in goal.

Knowing Wymack wanted Andrew to play both halves, without his medicine and without a sub, terrified him. If he somehow managed to play through the psychological and physical crash, he definitely wouldn’t survive the withdrawal sickness. Just thinking about it made Kevin nauseous. Even if Andrew had supposedly done it once last October, it was stupid and dangerous. The ERC were already looking for reasons to remove Andrew from their lineup, and if they found out he was playing without his medication, they’d take him away and the Foxes’ numbers would be too small to play.

The fact that Andrew agreed to giving his all to Wymack in exchange for a bottle of whiskey made Kevin’s blood boil. Every tireless night he had begged Andrew to practice with him, every analogy and argument he had used to make him see sense as to why Exy was worthwhile and fun—all of his effort meant nothing in comparison to a fucking bottle of whiskey. It infuriated him.

That, combined with how Andrew had been avoiding him since he caught him kissing Neil, was pushing them to a tipping point that would need to be addressed, and soon.

Not before the match, however. Andrew was passed out on the seat behind him, and even if he wasn’t, there was no way he was getting into that conversation now when Neil was sat right in front of him. Neil had his head bowed as he worked through his calculus homework, and while he didn’t say a word, Kevin found him endlessly distracting.

Neil had turned to brace his back against the bus windows, feet up on the seat so he could rest his notebook across his knees. Kevin had a perfect view of his profile. With only the backs of his teammate’s heads to judge him, he could sneak glances and stare openly as much as he wanted.

And after last night, it didn’t really matter anymore if Neil caught him looking either.

Kevin tried to limit himself. He was worried he was letting himself fall too deep, and kept forcing his gaze back out to the rain lashing against the windows. But Kevin’s attention was constantly being pulled back to him.

Every time Neil chewed on the cap on the end of his pen, he thought about how soft his lips had been when they kissed. When Neil trailed his fingers along the edge of the paper before turning a page, he thought about Neil’s hands on his skin, under his shirt, on his arms, massaging the scars on his left hand. When Neil sighed and ran his hand through his hair to think over a particularly difficult question, Kevin thought about Neil’s bedhead when they woke up together, and the moans from the night before.

Kevin didn’t need external motivation for winning an Exy game, but that promise of ‘we can do it again if we win tonight’ rattled around his brain every time Neil so much as breathed.

Kevin forced himself to look out at the road signs passing by on the highway out the window, and he attempted to drown out the little thoughtful noises Neil would make by cranking the volume on his iPod. But even Mozart couldn’t block out Nicky, who plopped himself down on the seat next to Neil to start talking to him about the upcoming game.

Maybe talking about Exy would bring back some normalcy to Kevin’s thoughts. He tugged out his headphones and leaned forward to listen to the conversation. He was surprised when Renee left a sleeping Allison to come to join them. She had some ideas for the defense line, and as she and Nicky started excitedly discussing backliner techniques, he found himself unexpectedly impressed by their passion for the game. 

Perhaps it had been unfair of him to assume Neil was the only one on his team who cared about Exy. Tonight, they could at least pretend to be a united front for an hour and a half. They would have to be, if they were going to stand a chance.

-

The Terrapins’ roster was twice the size of the Foxes. Kevin twisted his racquet in his hands as he watched them fill up the entire home bench across the court. The Foxes barely filled half of the away bench, and the empty stretches of wood either side of them made their numbers feel even smaller. Any other person would feel overwhelmed with how outnumbered they were, but instead Kevin thought about the Battle of Vitkov Hill, where a group of peasants protected Prague from an army of 150,000 Crusaders.

It might have happened in 1420, but the tactics remained largely applicable to their match now. The Crusaders thought the city would be taken easily, so they attacked carelessly. But even if the peasants were just fighting with crudely sharpened tools, they repelled every attack for two days until a relief force could route around and stop the invasion.

The Terrapins would undoubtedly underestimate them tonight, especially after the Foxes’ fresh loss of Seth. Provided the Fox backliners could withstand the Terrapin’s offensive onslaught, and Andrew pulled off the miracle Wymack had bribed him for tonight, then he and Neil could route around during the second half and score enough goals to win the fight. 

They started warm-up laps and Kevin fell into line with Andrew out of habit, forgetting momentarily that he was being ignored. It was only when they were a quarter of the way around the inner court that he realised that Andrew’s silence wasn’t just from his drugs slowly filtering out of his system. When Andrew swerved to the side Kevin slowed with him just in case it was withdrawal related, but Andrew shot him an annoyed look to reassure him that he wasn’t wanted.

Neil passed them both, fast as ever, so Kevin picked up speed to run next to him instead.

“If you trip over your own feet tonight, I won’t pick you up,” Kevin warned Neil. He knew he wouldn’t, but a bit of light teasing before a match sometimes got the testosterone going enough to take the edge off the nerves.

Neil was quick to snip back at him, unfazed, “If I do, it’s your fault.”

“I warned you that you’d limp onto court today,” Kevin shot back.

“And do you see me limping? Try to keep up.”

Neil burst forward, easily overtaking their teammates and leaving Kevin in the dust. True to his word, Neil wasn’t limping. Kevin wondered if it was just because he had taken so much care with prepping Neil the night before, or if Neil was just used to that kind of uncomfortable twinge of pain. The latter made his heart seize with a surge of inexplicable jealousy. He miserably mulled that over as he finished his laps alone.

The team reconvened to stretch out, did their cursory fifteen minutes of drills and then geared up to file onto the court. Shortly after Dan won them first serve in the coin toss, the buzzer shuddered through Kevin’s bones and they began.

The game started out rough. The Terrapins scored three times in the first twenty minutes which made the initial goal Kevin had secured feel meaningless. It seemed the only thing going right was the fact that Neil was actually following the tactics Kevin had laid out pre-game and was pacing himself. His passes had noticeably improved since they started their precision drills in June, so when he slipped past Herrera and slammed a shot into Kevin’s net, it held enough power and speed that he could rebound it and shoot it straight into the Terrapin’s goal for a second time.

It was only when the goal lit up red that he realised how out of breath he was, and how badly his wrist was aching. Thankfully, Wymack chose that moment to swap out the substitutions. Kevin veered past Neil on his way off the court. Neil was warmed up, but had barely broken a sweat. Kevin clacked his stick to his and told him what he wanted to hear.

“Destroy them.”

He couldn’t see his mouth, but he could hear the grin in Neil’s reply: “Yeah.”

He, Allison and Nicky filed off the court as Dan, Renee and Aaron walked on to replace them. Once everyone was in place, the refs locked the court doors and the buzzer rang out to restart the game. Kevin tugged off his helmet and took a Gatorade from Abby, twisting the cap off as Renee dealt the ball back to Andrew like how Allison had done at the beginning of the game. Andrew batted it so hard it flew all the way to the home court wall, and then Kevin’s eyes were locked on Neil as he dashed off after it like a bullet from a gun.

Herrera caught it, but Neil did an incredible job of marking him and slowing him down until their teammates could catch up. From the bench, Kevin only then realised how small Neil was in comparison to Herrera. Herrera’s reach was longer, so Neil had to make up for it by being twice as fast. It seemed like an impossible match-up from out here, but somehow he was making it work. When Herrera passed, Matt was able to pop it out of the Terrapins striker’s hold and he threw it back to Andrew again.

Andrew turned and smashed the ball away. It cracked into the plexiglass in front of Kevin’s face so loudly that for a split second he thought he’d been shot. Nicky let out a yelp in surprise next to him and long string of curses as he spilled his Gatorade everywhere. The ball rebounded into Neil and Herrera’s general direction, and they both darted towards it. Herrera’s run turned reckless and it was clear he was intending on crushing Neil with a bodycheck. Kevin jumped up and screamed on instinct, pounding the glass to try to warn Neil to get out of the way, even though he knew he’d never hear him over the roar of the crowd.

Neil caught the ball. Herrera caught up. Kevin held his breath.

Neil dropped to the floor. Kevin’s heart stopped. Did he trip? Did his knee give out? It happened so fast that Herrera barrelled into Neil’s curled body at full speed. The juggernaut toppled over him, crashing into the wall so hard Kevin swore he felt the vibrations against his hands pressed to the glass.

A second later, Neil scrambled free from under his limbs and grabbed his stick. Kevin let out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. Then, fury ignited his veins. He could tell Neil was favouring his right shoulder from the way he adjusted his grip. Kevin’s fists ached as he smacked them against the glass.

“What the fuck Neil!”

Neil was deaf to his concern as he scooped up the ball and dashed for the goal. Wymack, however, grabbed Kevin’s forearm to still him.

“Cool it, Kevin. He can’t hear you.”

“Did you see that? That was so fucking stupid! He could have dislocated his shoulder, or worse, and—”

Kevin was cut off as the stadium erupted in a roar. The home goal lit up red in response to the Foxes’ third goal. Even with Neil scoring to tie them three-even, Kevin couldn’t put aside his anger at Neil’s recklessness. He wrenched his arm out of Wymack’s grip and sat down on the bench to stew silently.

He wished Abby was here to call Neil off court and check his shoulder. He looked around for her, but neither her nor Allison were present. Instead, Nicky caught his eye and leaned over with a conspiring smirk. 

“Hey. Bet you ten bucks when Abby checks on him, Neil will say ‘I’m fine’.”

“Neil cares enough about his career not to downplay injuries like that,” Kevin replied, and rubbed at the scars on the back of his left hand.

Nicky merely laughed and leaned back in his seat, saying something about easy money. Kevin scoffed and refocused on the match at hand. Each team scored once more each, ending four-even at half time.

As soon as the inner court doors opened, Kevin tried to push past the stadium staff and his teammates to get to Neil. He got swept up in the current of people, and Kevin lost him until the team poured into the break room. The air was warm with excited chatter as everyone discussed the game so far. Kevin couldn’t share their optimism, too annoyed with Neil’s idiocy. He started stalking over to him to give him a piece of his mind, but there was a black hole sucking the energy out of the air, and he had to stop to look at it.

It was Andrew. He was the only other person besides Kevin not celebrating prematurely. While Kevin was brimming with anger, Andrew was at the stage of withdrawal where he became completely vacant and unresponsive. It was a normal mood for him when he was coming off the drugs before going to bed, but it was out of place during the rush of an Exy match. Especially when he was deliberately standing still in the middle of the room, not interacting with any of his teammates.

Most of the team was wise enough to ignore him.

Except for Neil.

“Stop it,” Neil snapped.

The conversations in the room tapered out. Kevin looked to Andrew, not expecting him to respond. Andrew had ignored Kevin all week, so why would Neil get special treatment? But then something that tasted like bitter jealousy twisted up into Kevin’s mouth when Andrew not only looked at Neil, but also replied:

“I’m not doing anything.”

Neil looked like he wanted to say something more, but with the whole team watching them, he shut up. Nicky awkwardly tried to break the silence by cheering their meagre four-even score, but thankfully Kevin didn’t need to shut him down because Wymack did it for him. Their lack of point-gap was unforgivable with a roster as small as theirs. The chance of them winning was quickly slipping out of their grasp, and Dan seemed to be the only other one who understood that.

Abby appeared in the break room soon enough and started handing out water and sports drinks for everyone. Nicky nudged Kevin’s side when she made her way over to Neil and whispered in his ear, “Prepare to pay up.”

Kevin ignored him, but when Neil replied with an “I’m fine” to Abby’s concern, he crushed his paper cup in his fist.

Nicky jumped up to punch the air in victory. “Thank you for being so predictable, Neil! You just scored me ten bucks with two words.”

Matt looked over, “Are you serious? Who the hell bet against you?”

Kevin tuned out Nicky’s gloating as he focused his anger on Neil.

“You are an idiot. Do you see this?” He jerked his left hand up, gesturing to his scars. He was shaking, and he didn't know whether it was from anger or fear. “Injuries are not a joke. They are not something to gloss over. If you get hurt out there, you do something about it. You take it easy, you have Coach pull you, you ask Abby for help—I don’t care.” He stepped into Neil’s space and pushed a finger into his chest. He dropped into a dangerously low whisper. “If you ever say ‘I’m fine’ about your health again I will make you rue the day you were born. Are we clear?”

Neil’s jaw went slack, and for once didn’t have a smart response waiting on the tip of his tongue. Instead, after a moment he settled for a quiet, “We’re clear.”

“I did warn you,” Dan teased Neil, sounding completely unsympathetic. “I think Kevin’s threats are more effective though.”

Dan’s voice probably sliced the tension for the rest of the room. But for Kevin, it merely triggered his paranoia. He remembered then he was surrounded by his teammates and their team staff. Yelling at Neil on the court was common enough that he didn’t think twice about it anymore, but this was the first time he’d shown transparent concern for him in front of such a large audience. 

Why Dan felt like his threats would be more effective than anyone else’s was beyond him. Combined with her comment about Neil sitting on the same couch as him earlier that week—did she suspect something? Had he been obvious about what was happening with Neil? He was antsy to check if he sweated off his makeup and his hickey was showing.

He didn’t have the nerve to check if anyone else was looking at him suspiciously, so instead he glanced down at the scars on the back of his hand and rubbed them anxiously. He hoped that his teammates would just pass off his outburst as a reflection of his trauma and less about it being specifically about Neil. 

When Wymack pulled them into a huddle to prep for the second half, he felt the eyes being peeled off of him like stickers from glass. They were gone, but he still felt the sticky residue of their stare.

Neil wasn’t on for the beginning of the second half, so Kevin didn’t have to worry about him as they filed onto the court and the buzzer sang. By the time Neil joined the court, the Foxes had scored enough times that Kevin was tunnel visioned in on winning and didn’t have space to think about Neil’s injury.

The rest of the game went by in a blur. Kevin slammed another goal, and from the collective groan from the Terrapins fans he knew it meant they had just pushed into the lead. There was only a minute left on the clock. They had to prevent the Terrapins from earning overtime, but somehow with only seconds left, one of their strikers got the ball and was legging it for the Foxes goal. The striker slipped past an exhausted Matt and Aaron with ease. Then he took his shot.

Andrew took off running even before the ball had left the net. The ball hurtled towards the opposite end of the goal from Andrew. There was no way a shot this close could be blocked, and Kevin winced as Andrew dove for it with his entire body. There was a thunderous crack as his racquet smashed into the floor.

Somehow, impossibly, Andrew blocked it.

But it wasn’t over. The ball bounced off of the very tip of his net and went hurtling back towards the Terrapin striker. Andrew abandoned his racquet and chased after the ball. There was a white and green blur as Aaron tackled the Terrapin striker out of the way. Andrew narrowly avoided the pile-up as he scooped up the ball in his gloved hand. As Aaron and the striker fell in a heap to the floor, the final buzzer blasted.

Distantly, Kevin could hear his teammates losing their shit. They were in disbelief that they won, but Kevin was more shocked by what he had just witnessed. Weighed down by apathy, Andrew had never moved like that on the Foxhole Court.

Kevin pushed past his teammates and crossed the court over to the goal. Andrew was slumped on the ground with his splintered racquet in his lap. From the heave of his shoulders, the audience would think he was merely out of breath, but Kevin knew Andrew was struggling to keep the waves of nausea from his withdrawal down. He knelt in front of him and mocked examining the totalled racquet for the sake of the cameras as he spoke to him.

“That was incredible, Andrew. Plays like that are why I said you could be Court.”

Andrew clawed in a strangled breath before rasping a simple: “Don’t.”

Kevin’s grip on the racquet tightened and the shaft splintered more.

“Can you imagine how good you’d be if you practiced with me? This is you now, with minimum effort. Just think, if you played like that every game, instead of just when you were being bribed. You have so much potential.”

“Shut up,” Andrew spat.

“I mean it, Andrew.” Kevin stopped anyway, sensing his teammates were approaching. “But thank you.” 

A shadow fell across Andrew’s lap as he replied. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Kevin looked up to see Neil had joined them. He tugged his helmet off and slowly looked between Andrew and Kevin, brows furrowed in concern. A moment later, Nicky and the rest of team were barrelling into them to loop them into the celebrations. Andrew’s complicated motivations around Exy could wait. They had just won their first game of the season.

-

The rush of the win hit him as soon as they lined up to clack sticks with the losing team. The chants of “Good game!” still felt fake, but at least it came with the smug undercurrent of knowing that the Foxes won. By the time they were walking off court, he was buzzing with the ichor of victory.

Renee and Dan were on press duty. Allison and Abby were already on the bus. Andrew was nowhere to be seen, and the rest of his teammates were filing into the men’s changing room to wash up. All except Neil, who was detouring to the women’s changing rooms to shower in private.

Emboldened by triumph, Kevin cast a glance around to check nobody was watching, and then followed him in.

Neil had already dropped his duffel bag, helmet and gloves on the bench. He didn’t even turn when Kevin entered, preoccupied with unclipping his neck guard. “Come to lecture me again?”

“Maybe. Did you understand how stupid that move was, or do I need to remind you?”

“I understand. Still doesn’t change the fact that it worked.”

Kevin crossed over to him in four short steps. He tossed his gear to the bench hard enough that his helmet span and clacked into Neil’s. Unperturbed, Neil dropped his neck guard to the pile.

“You need to learn to not run so close to the outer rim when your mark is that much bigger than you.” Kevin lectured.

Neil viciously peeled off his undergloves in silence.

“It was a smart play,” Kevin reluctantly bit out. Neil paused in removing his orange bandana. “He would have crushed you against the wall if you hadn’t done it. You did a good job to think of that so quickly.”

Neil looked up at Kevin, astonished. Dark hair fell into his brown eyes, and Kevin brushed it aside. It was softer than he recalled, but then again he’d never really spent much time appreciating Neil before. Their encounters had always been rushed.

He caught himself longing for the easy pace of a real relationship, where there wasn’t a desperate scramble to make every second of each stolen moment count. It was a fantasy they’d never have the luxury of indulging in, as long as they remained athletes in the public eye.

“Thanks,” Neil said quietly.

“You played well tonight,” Kevin continued. Neil was catlike as he leaned his head into the hand carding through his hair. Kevin didn’t normally indulge in praise, but Neil’s reaction was mesmerising. It got a little easier with each word. “Your passes have improved. And you paced yourself like I asked. Good job.”

Neil shivered. An urgent air seemed to shift around them.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“It’s fine,” Neil replied automatically.

“Good.”

Then Kevin shoved Neil into the wall so hard his bones reverberated against the tiles. Neil let out a gasp and Kevin’s mouth was immediately on his neck. Neil scrambled at his shoulders, dug fingers into his hair and dragged Kevin up to meet his mouth.

The kiss was bruising. Neil’s height meant that Kevin had to bend to meet him, so instead he cupped under Neil’s ass and hoisted him up, pinning him to the tiles. Neil’s toned thighs clamped around his narrow hips and with a groan he made the kiss sloppy, licking into Kevin’s mouth. Kevin’s dick was hard and Neil was shameless as he ground his ass against him.

“Are we doing this now or not?” Neil asked needily.

Kevin thought about sitting behind Neil for the six hour journey back home, unable to touch him and with no privacy to get himself off. After wanting him all day, it would be torture. 

“Yeah,” he breathed. “We have to be quick though.”

“Come on then.”

Kevin put him down only long enough so they could both unlace their shorts. Neil tossed his aside, but Kevin only bothered to shove his half way down his thighs before picking Neil back up. The adrenaline was making him shake and pressing his face into his neck steadied him. He inhaled deeply, sweat and court wax and an undercurrent of something smokey and distinctly Neil grounding him.

He had to pull back as Neil ripped Kevin’s jersey over his head and tossed it to the floor. The straps of his chest armour were too complicated to come undone in the moment, so Neil used them as a harness to hold on to instead. He arched his back off the wall and rubbed himself against Kevin’s slick head teasingly. 

“Holy fuck,” Neil tried to push himself down onto Kevin, but somehow despite the sheer wanting throbbing in his veins, Kevin managed to hold onto sense for just a moment and paused Neil’s movement.

“Don’t have lube,” Kevin cursed, and Neil licked a line up the side of his jaw and cheek. Kevin shuddered, wondering for a moment how someone as unassuming as Neil could have a side like this. His resolve cracked.

“Don’t care.”

“Or a condom.”

Neil whispered into Kevin’s ear, “What did I just say?”

Kevin groaned at the thought and experimentally pushed the tip of his dick against Neil’s hole, but stopped shy of going in. When he didn’t move, Neil put his pretty mouth to work by cussing Kevin out in French. Kevin shoved three fingers into his mouth to shut him up. Neil bit his fingers in warning, but then sucked on them obediently. Kevin rewarded him by rocking against his tight heat, feeling Neil slowly stretching out against his head.

God, he wanted Neil so bad. 

“Okay,” Kevin finally agreed, arousal winning out over reason.

He withdrew his fingers from Neil’s mouth and slipped one into his ass. Neil grunted in discomfort at the sudden intrusion and Kevin gave him a look that said ‘I told you so’. Neil bit Kevin’s lip hard in return, but then struggled to choke down his moans as Kevin slowly fingerfucked him.

Kevin had to shush him as he introduced a second finger to scissor him open. Neil’s grip on his nylon shoulder straps threatened to burn marks into Kevin’s skin. He didn’t think he would mind as long as Neil kept muttering in French to hurry up and fuck him already.

“You’re not ready,” Kevin replied in the same tongue.

“Just do it.” Neil demanded.

“It’ll hurt.” Kevin warned.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Kevin knew something had to be wrong with Neil for him to qualify as a Fox, but he would never understand how he could be so needlessly self destructive. The scars on his back made Kevin wonder if Neil was just accustomed to living in pain, much like how he and Jean had adjusted to their abusive way of life in the Nest.

But just because he was used to it, didn’t make it okay. ‘It hurts and that’s just how it is’ wasn’t an acceptable mantra anymore, and even though Kevin still needed to remind himself of that every so often, he wasn’t about to let Neil fall down that rabbit hole.

Remembering how tight Neil been last night, how much coaxing and prep he’d needed… there was no way they had time for that right now. And listening to Neil—hurting him—wasn’t an option. His chest clenched painfully at the thought.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” Neil insisted, “I can take it.”

“I don’t think you can.” Kevin withdrew his fingers and lowered Neil to the floor.

Neil shot him an insolent look. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough, don’t I?” He knew his file by heart. They’d played together for months. If anything, Kevin thought he probably knew more than the others.

“You really don’t.” Neil spat caustically.

Neil’s antagonism sparked Kevin’s. “Well, I know that our teammates will start asking questions if they realise where I am. We don’t have time.”

“You better get back to them then.” Neil folded his arms and glanced down at Kevin’s erection derisively. Kevin self consciously tucked himself away and tugged up his shorts. There was an obvious tent.

“I can’t go back like this.”

“Well you can’t shower here. There’s no stalls.”

“I don’t need a stall.” Kevin protested.

“I do.”

Kevin sighed and attempted to reason with him. “Neil, I’ve already seen your scars.”

Neil flinched. “When?”

Kevin felt his heart drop into his stomach. He thought Neil knew he’d seen. He didn’t know he’d react like this. Like Kevin had just pulled out a knife.

“Last night.” When Neil merely stared at him with a look of confusion and fear, Kevin carefully elaborated. “On the couch. When you... turned over. Your shirt rode up at the back. I thought you knew.”

Neil’s hands went up to cover his face. He was shaking. When he spoke again, his voice was a mere whisper.

“I knew this was a mistake.”

“Neil, it’s okay—” Kevin tried to touch his elbow. Neil jerked away.

“No. No it’s not. Get out.”

“Neil—”

“Get. Out.”

Kevin stepped back from him. He tried to find something he could say, anything that could help comfort Neil, but his mouth was full of blanks. Neil was right. Kevin knew nothing about him. He didn’t know why his scars were such a sensitive topic, and why Neil tried so desperately to hide them. He didn’t know anything about his past or where he could have gotten them from. He knew his eyes were blue but he didn’t know why he wore coloured contacts when there was nothing wrong with his vision.

Kevin numbly picked up his gear and left. Neil was just as mysterious as he had been when they first met. Time had only provided more questions, not answers. And Kevin only had himself to blame for not asking them before it was too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your favourite part by dropping me a comment :)


	7. The Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has commented so far. Hearing what you like means a lot to me, and I love reading your speculations on where you think this is going! I'm adding an extra chapter so this will finish up on chapter 9.
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** Themes in this chapter revolve around depression and the fear of coming out. There is one very vague and short reference to suicidal thinking.

The elation of victory was a flimsy mask that Kevin was used to hiding behind. Even when the cheers of the audience couldn’t touch his core, the cameras required him to smile. His teammates expected some level of pride and optimism.

He’d had enough years of effortlessly winning with the Ravens that the victories didn’t stir any emotion anymore. He’d hoped it would feel different with the Foxes. The power of the underdog story could lift him out of his hole and make him feel something again.

It might have worked had he not immediately butchered things with Neil.

The finality of _‘I knew this was a mistake’_ echoed around his head the entire six hour journey back. It took the victory he should have been savouring and tainted it with the sour aftertaste of loss.

He didn’t expect to care as much as he did. Neil was meant to be a side project, an experiment to prove Andrew’s theory, dropped once they found out he wasn’t interested in Kevin like he claimed to be. Kevin wasn’t meant to look forward to getting him alone. He wasn’t meant to pine after him when he was sitting only one seat away. He wasn’t meant to hurt when Neil ended things.

Kevin kept it together in front of his teammates until he got back to his dorm. He sunk down into his pillow and stayed still under the guise of exhaustion until Nicky switched off the lights. He tried to justify his misery as a side effect of the post-game adrenaline crash. He’d be fine in the morning.

If only Neil was Kevin’s only problem.

-

Kevin woke up on Saturday morning with dread pinning him to the sheets. The fall banquet was in one week.

Meeting Riko on Kathy’s show had been bad enough. Seeing all twenty two of his former teammates, plus his coach, would be torture. Meeting Jean’s eyes—after abandoning him in the Nest—might actually kill him. Keeping it together in front of all of them, plus the other twelve teams that were looking for any weakness to pick apart the Foxes with, was going to be impossible.

He couldn’t do it. He had to find a way out. He’d ask Wymack for permission to skip it. If he said no, he’d fake being sick. Or maybe he’d actually get sick. They had a game on Friday against USC Columbia, so he couldn’t catch anything before then. But maybe if he got sudden, severe food poisoning, he’d have to stay at home to recover.

He took his phone out from under his pillow and google searched how long it would take to recover from food poisoning. He got his hopes up when he read that symptoms could begin in one hour, and recovery would only take one to two days. He became a little uncertain when he started reading the list of symptoms, and started thinking about how dehydration, muscle aches, blurry vision and a fever could impact his training and performance for the week’s following game. When he read that some strains of food poisoning could take anywhere from four days to three weeks to manifest, and multiple weeks to recover from if severe enough, he groaned and dropped his phone in defeat.

That wasn’t going to work. It was a futile idea to research, anyway. He knew he had to go. If he didn’t, the fallout would be much, much worse. He was already being called a turncoat. Fans wanted to paint him as a coward, and this would just be more fuel for their fire to burn down the remains of his reputation.

No, the only way he’d be able to avoid the fall banquet was by being dead.

Oh.

That was an idea.

-

The room was painted a sticky grey when Kevin woke up again. A glance at his phone told him it was four in the afternoon. Somehow, despite sleeping for nearly sixteen hours, he still felt exhausted. He stared blankly at the numbers on his phone and then let it fall from his hand. He knew he should probably eat something, but his limbs were too heavy to move. He wasn’t really hungry, anyway.

-

“He’s been in bed all day.”

“He’s probably just hungover.”

“I don’t think he was drinking when we got back from Belmonte last night, though.”

“What are you, his keeper?”

“I’m just saying! You’re a doctor, can’t you check on him or something?”

“I’m not a doctor yet.”

“Well, whatever. Doctor-in-training. I don’t want to bother Abby.”

A heavy sigh.

The bed dipped. A small hand went to his shoulder and shook him gently. Kevin didn’t really want to explain why he’d been in bed all day, so he feigned sleep. The hand moved to his forehead, and after a moment the weight lifted off the bed.

“He doesn’t have a fever. He’s probably just tired… of your bullshit.”

An affronted gasp.

“Rude! Well, can you wake him up? We’re leaving for Eden’s in an hour.”

“Just leave him. Also I’m not going, I’ve got a date tonight.”

A wolf-whistle. The voices started to fade as they left the room.

“About time! Are you bringing her to the banquet?”

-

It was dark the next time Kevin opened his eyes. His entire body was clammy with dried sweat, it was too hot under his blanket, but more pressingly, he really needed the toilet. The dorm was quiet, so he figured Andrew and Nicky had already gone to Eden’s, and Aaron was out on his date.

Vaguely, he wondered if Neil had gone to Eden’s with Nicky and Andrew. Maybe Neil was moving on to the next guy already. If he was, Kevin was glad he wasn’t there to see it. But he also sort of wished he was there so he could stop it. He immediately started to regret ignoring Nicky’s attempts to wake him earlier. Maybe the drinks and dust could have taken his mind off of the fall banquet, too.

He pushed thoughts of Neil aside and eventually dragged himself out of bed to go to the bathroom. He didn’t really understand how he could need to pee after not eating or drinking anything all day. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he knew he should probably eat, so he finished up in the bathroom and dragged himself over to the kitchen.

Typically, all of the lights had been left on. He made a mental note to lecture his roommates about their energy wasting tendencies later, and opened up the fridge to see if there was anything easy he could snack on. Nothing caught his eye, so he swung the door shut. Behind it was Aaron. Kevin jumped and swore.

“What the fuck!” Kevin braced a hand over his heart as he calmed down from the fright, “I thought you guys were out.”

“I was on the couch, you walked right past me,” Aaron deadpanned.

“Oh. I didn’t see you.”

“Clearly.”

Aaron pushed past him and opened up the fridge himself, digging out a Chinese takeout box to toss into the microwave. It clattered loudly against the glass dish and he slammed the microwave door. Kevin stood there awkwardly for a moment, then started to leave.

“Wait.” Aaron said, and Kevin stopped in the doorway. Aaron filled a glass with water from the sink and held it out to him.

“You look like shit. Drink.”

Kevin grimaced at being called out, but obediently took the glass and had a sip to appease him. Aaron didn’t look particularly impressed, and assessed him with a cool look.

“What’s going on with you?” He asked.

"I’m sick.” Kevin replied automatically.

“No you’re not.”

It was pointless trying to fake illness to Aaron. Kevin sighed and reluctantly agreed.

“No, I’m not.”

“So what’s actually going on?”

The microwave dinged and Aaron rummaged around for a fork. Kevin slumped down at the kitchen table and listlessly batted the glass of water back and forth between his hands. Aaron sat down at the table with him, and to Kevin’s surprise ended up pushing the microwaved food towards him. He wasn’t hungry before, but now with the smell of Chow Mein wafting up into his face he was ravenous. He didn’t even have the energy to argue about the MSG, so he simply dug in and filled his mouth with noodles to avoid answering Aaron’s question.

Aaron was patient to an extent, but when Kevin just started pushing noodles around the container without looking up, he eventually spoke up.

“Look. I’m going to be straight with you. I’ve fought with depression and seen it in others around me enough to recognise what’s going on. I know you guys fought a lot, but it’s natural to be upset right now. If you need to talk about Seth, Dr. Dobson said she’d make out of hours appointments for us.”

Kevin dropped his fork and leaned back in his seat, meeting Aaron’s hazel eyes across the table.

“This isn’t about Seth.”

Aaron just stared at him, expression shifting slightly into something more guarded.

“What is it then?”

Kevin looked back down at his food, appetite gone again. He pushed the container away.

“The fall banquet.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realised how self-centered it sounded, but it was too late to take it back.

Aaron looked unimpressed. “What, you don’t have a date or something?”

“I’m not bringing one. The banquet isn’t for hooking up, it’s for networking with other teams.”

“So what’s the issue? You love that stuff.”

“I can’t go.”

“You have to go, everyone else is going.”

“My old team will be there.”

“Well, obviously.” It took Aaron a moment to connect why that was an issue. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Kevin folded his arms on the table and buried his head in them.

“Maybe you should skip it.”

“I can’t skip it. If I don’t go, he’ll say I’m too afraid to face him. It would be a PR disaster.”

“He can’t do anything to you. The ERC will be there, and all of the other teams.” Aaron was aiming for reassuring, but it only added more terror to Kevin’s veins. He made a weak, muffled noise of disagreement. Aaron sighed and continued, “We’ll be there too, you know. The team will watch out for you.”

“Yeah, like how you guys stopped him at Kathy’s show?”

It was a bit of a low blow, but Aaron wasn’t deterred. “You know that was different. Andrew would have probably stabbed Riko live on national television if we hadn’t held him back. Renee literally had to sit on him.”

“She won’t need to this time.” Kevin muttered miserably.

It was vague enough that he didn’t think Aaron would understand what he meant, but after a short pause Aaron spoke up.

“I had a feeling something was up between you two. Andrew’s routine has been off, and I noticed you haven’t been doing your evening practices.” When Kevin only sighed in response, Aaron continued. “What did you do?”

That got his attention. Kevin’s head whipped up and he snarled.

“What do you mean, what did **_I_** do?”

Aaron didn’t bat an eye at the sudden shift into aggression. “Andrew’s retaliating to something. He doesn’t do that unprompted. He’s avoiding you, right?”

Kevin gaped. He didn’t think Aaron noticed or cared enough about him to pay attention to who he interacted with. He quickly justified it as Aaron just monitoring Andrew’s behaviour—the fact that Kevin was involved was inconsequential.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Aaron stole Kevin’s abandoned Chow Mein and stuffed a forkful in his mouth. “So, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything! We had a deal, and I fulfilled it.” When Aaron only met him with a blank, unimpressed look Kevin groaned and gave up more information. “He cancelled the deal like two hours before I fulfilled it and now he’s pissed because he didn’t want me to carry it out anymore.”

Aaron pointed the fork at him. “You know how seriously Andrew takes deals.”

Kevin scoffed and gestured at Aaron’s clothes. They were nicer than what he normally wore, and it was clear he was still intending on going out with Katelyn that night.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

Aaron shrugged indifferently. “But you see, Andrew’s not avoiding me. He’s avoiding you. You fucked up, and you’ve got to fix it.”

Kevin snapped.

“If he’s going to control every little thing I do then I might as well be back with Riko.”

As soon as the name was out of his mouth, Kevin felt cold. His lungs sank down into the pit of his stomach. Aaron silently put down his fork and laced his fingers together. Kevin couldn't breathe.

“I—I didn't mean that.”

“But you said it,” Aaron said frostily. “You've been thinking it.”

Kevin’s hands began to tremble. Tightening his grip on his glass failed to steady them. He bored a hole in the table with his stare, unable to meet Aaron’s eyes. Every time he felt like he had a response on his tongue, his ability to open his mouth left him.

“He’s not like him.” Aaron said eventually.

“I know.” Kevin agreed. It wasn’t convincing.

Aaron stood up. His chair screeching against the tiles punctuated the silence. The garbage clanged loudly as he threw the rest of the Chow Mein away. The lid snapping shut was like a slap across the face. Aaron leaving wordlessly was louder, and more painful, than anything else he could have said.

-

Sunday was miserable. He at least had the forethought to put a USC match on his laptop and doze with his headphones on. When Nicky eventually got back from Columbia, he left him alone. Aaron ignored him. He never saw Andrew.

-

The only reason he got out of bed on Monday was because he had class. The distraction of his textbooks was good for him, for a while.

Afternoon practice did him wonders. The endorphin rush from running around the court and pushing his body to the limit always helped him clear his head. It was uncomfortable seeing both Andrew and Aaron, but neither of them were interested in talking to him, so at least he didn’t have any awkward confrontations in front of the rest of the team. Nobody else seemed to notice what was going on between them.

Neil was being his usual unreadable self. Seeing him made Kevin’s heart skip uncomfortably. His neutral facade made Kevin wonder if there was a chance, with the right words, he could fix things. It gave him enough hope that he was able to momentarily forget that he had spent two days being miserable in his dorm. Neil responded neutrally when Kevin spoke to him about Exy on the court, but that was the only time he could speak to him—exclusively as a teammate, and always in front of other people. After practice Andrew lingered around Neil like a guard dog.

Tuesday was much of the same. Eventually, Kevin gave up trying to stall Andrew out in the changing rooms, and went to wait in the car with Nicky. Aaron was sitting in the back, but was content to ignore both of them, busy scribbling something onto a piece of paper while looking at his phone.

“We need to do something about Neil,” Nicky announced.

Kevin shut the car door and stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate.

“He can’t go to the fall banquet like this. All he has is ratty jeans and worn-out t-shirts, and the new stuff we got him for Eden’s won’t work either.”

Kevin visibly relaxed and let out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding. He’d been so wrapped up in dreading Saturday that he had forgotten to prepare for it himself, or to get Neil ready for it either. It wasn’t technically his responsibility, but he had essentially taken Neil under his wing in regards to his budding stardom, so he did feel a little niggle of regret for having forgotten he was also attending the banquet.

“Yeah, I need to get something new to wear too.”

Nicky grinned. “I like a man who appreciates the finer threads in life. You’ve got a closet full of suits but you’re always ready to buy more. That’s why you’re on my list.”

Aaron scoffed from the back. “Nobody wants to hear about your list, Nicky.”

Nicky twisted around in his seat to look at Aaron. “Don’t be jealous just because a midget like you isn’t on anyone’s list.” Aaron threw his pencil at his head and Nicky squawked indignantly when it hit the side of the headrest.

Kevin rolled his eyes at their antics. He could see Andrew and Neil approaching from across the parking lot. “So when are we going?”

Nicky turned the key in the ignition. “Now. But don’t tell Neil.”

-

“At some point you’re going to have to try something on,” Nicky sighed.

It had been an exasperating hour dragging Neil from store to store. He always had some sort of excuse for why he didn’t like the clothes. They were either too expensive, or too flashy, or too long for him, or were from the kids section and—Kevin was exhausted.

Andrew had been making a nuisance of himself in every store as well, pulling clothes off of the hangers and dumping them on the floor unceremoniously. They had already been asked to leave two stores, and if it continued he suspected they’d get kicked out of the mall even before they had bought anything for Neil.

Nicky’s buzzing enthusiasm about dressing up Neil was as oppressive and as ever-present as the fluorescent lighting overhead. Aaron was the only one not actively annoying him, but Kevin still resented the fact that he could just follow along while texting and essentially ignoring the group.

Kevin was at the end of his rope.

“I could just not go,” Neil said.

Kevin rounded on him. “Shut up. You’re going.”

He wanted to go even less than Neil did, but neither of them had any choice. Knowing that he wasn’t the only one dreading it did make him feel a little better, at least.

Kevin continued, “The other teams want to get a look at you.”

Maybe if he was lucky the other teams would be focusing their attention on their new mouthy recruit rather than the washed up ex-Ravens striker who couldn’t even win against Breckenridge.

“I don’t care,” Neil snipped. “The only place they matter to me is on the court.”

A part of Kevin couldn’t really disagree with him, but life as a professional Exy player wasn’t that simple. You couldn’t just cut out the PR and stardom and be successful at the same time. There was no such thing as an anonymous victory in the sporting world.

“Don’t lose face, Neil.” Andrew cut in to Kevin’s surprise. Kevin’s optimism about Andrew saying something mature was immediately crushed when he threw a hanger at Nicky’s head. It missed and clattered into a display stand behind them.

“You laughed at Riko on Kathy’s show. If you don’t go, he’ll say you’re too afraid to face him! For shame, Neil.”

Andrew might as well have been talking to Kevin, with how much the words resonated. It took him a minute to realise why the words hit so hard—it was because Kevin had said almost the exact same thing to Aaron only two nights previous. He gave Aaron an accusing look. Aaron looked away awkwardly and immediately busied himself with digging something out of his pocket.

“Here.” Aaron thrust a scrap of paper to Neil. “Take this before I forget it.”

Kevin was too busy glaring at Aaron over his betrayal to bother to look at what the paper was until Nicky started laughing.

“Seriously, Aaron?”

“Dan asked me to get a list from Katelyn,” Aaron said defensively.

“Who are these people?” Neil asked, holding the paper away from himself suspiciously.

“They’re the single Vixens. Ask one of them to go to the banquet with you.” Aaron explained.

Nicky snorted. “They’re all women, Aaron. That doesn’t help us.”

“Nicky,” Neil started, and looked to Kevin for help.

Kevin thought about Neil going to the banquet with a Vixen. Logically, it made sense. Showed school pride. People would gossip a little about Josten and his new girlfriend, but not nearly as much as they would if both he and Kevin showed up alone. With everyone else on their team paired off, assumptions would be made. They’d take one look at Kevin’s face and instantly know how far gone he was for Neil.

But he felt like if he saw a cheerleader loop her arm around Neil’s, he’d be sick. If Neil smiled at her for the cameras. If he kissed her for a photo op. If they got chatting and ended up hitting it off, and Neil started spending time with her after the banquet, and Kevin never got a chance to fix things, and Neil forgot about whatever was happening between him and Kevin.

Maybe it would be for the best.

Strange how what was good for you, often felt like it was ripping your heart out.

He looked away from Neil.

There was a crunch as Nicky balled up the list in his hands. “Your ignorance is endearing, Neil. You’re nineteen and you’ve never looked at Allison’s tits? There’s no way you’re straight. You and I really need to sit down and talk about this sometime.”

Aaron threw his hands up in the air, defeated. He said something about leaving before stalking off, but all Kevin could hear was Nicky’s words echoing around in his head. He felt like his silence would condone what he was suggesting, and then they would _know_. Not just about Neil, but about him too. There wasn’t a single professional Exy player out there who was out of the closet. Nicky could be himself only because he didn’t intend to go pro after university. If Kevin or Neil were outed, it could be career shattering.

Sports Illustrated had just polled 1,400 athletes in a recent issue asking if they would be willing to accept a gay teammate. The majority were, but over half thought that being openly gay would hurt the athlete’s career, and nearly a quarter believed that openly gay athletes hurt the sporting world _in general_.

With Kevin’s dominant hand destroyed, and his reputation with the Ravens in tatters, he didn’t have the skills to make his career untouchable anymore. He was already struggling against the current, and he couldn’t risk anything else weighing him down. A nobody like Neil could risk it even less. Everything they had worked for would be for nothing.

Kevin had to say _something_ , so he said: “Stop being a bad influence.”

Nicky’s smile was slapped off his face. He looked the way Kevin felt when Riko would mock Jean and call him gay. Damned for something you had no control over. Terrified of being caught next.

Kevin swallowed and continued, trying to find a balance between being firm and not completely cruel. “I am going to make him Court. It’ll be easier if he remains heterosexual. You know more than any of us how prejudiced people can be. Imagine the impact it would have on his career.”

Neil stared at him. For a sinking, irrational moment, Kevin feared Neil might call him out on his hypocrisy. Out them both for the sake of a careless, witty comeback.

Thankfully, he was smarter than that.

“We aren’t really having this conversation,” Neil muttered in disbelief.

Nicky bounced back and attempted to cover Neil’s ears like a protective parent shielding his innocence. Neil twisted away, resulting in Nicky’s hands just mussing his hair in three different directions.

“ _You_ worry about Neil’s career.” Nicky scowled at Kevin. “ _I’ll_ worry about his personal happiness. Come on, even you have to admit this is really weird!”

Andrew tossed his hands in the air. “News-flash, Nicky: Neil isn’t normal!”

“This is beyond abnormal.”

“I am standing right here,” Neil complained, “and I can hear you.”

Kevin ignored them as they started arguing again, and only tuned back in once Nicky stormed off to go look at clothes further down the aisle. Neil was pushing some hangers back and forth on one of the racks thoughtlessly, clearly not paying attention. He eventually looked up and met Kevin’s gaze, brown eyes hopeful.

“Allison doesn’t have a date anymore. Would you take her?”

Kevin thought that if Neil had been looking up at him like that without his contacts in, he would have tripped over himself to say yes without even listening to the question. He kind of wanted to say yes just to get Neil’s approval, a change from the impersonal distance he’d been met with since Friday.

But Andrew was there, watching and analysing Kevin’s every word, so instead he simply stared Neil down.

Neil awkwardly elaborated after being met with silence. “She and Seth were excited to go. It was all they could talk about when we had lunch together. Now she’s going to go and he won’t be there.”

Andrew smiled derisively. “That’s a cheap way out. Getting someone else to clean up behind your mess? Oh, Neil.” Andrew casually slid another pair of slacks off the rack and let them drop to the store floor. “Do better than that next time, won’t you? You’re boring when your tail’s between your legs.”

“Fuck you,” Neil said. “Your theory is still just that: a theory. When you prove it—”

“What, it’ll miraculously make it easier for you to look Allison in the eyes?” Andrew mock-gasped, dramatically covering his mouth with a hand. His face quickly dropped back to his default blank expression. “When I prove it, it puts a target on Seth’s back and a paintbrush in your hands. Rethink that a bit, would you?”

Andrew laughed and walked off, leaving Kevin alone to deal with Neil. Neil turned back and gave him and imploring look. Kevin shook his head.

“I won’t bring her. You might have brought Riko’s wrath down on the striker line, but I’m the reason he’s in the south in the first place. Neither of us has the right to speak to Allison now.”

Neil looked betrayed. “You think Andrew’s right.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t kill people over a game.”

Kevin envied Neil’s innocent view of Exy. Part of him wanted to preserve his naivety, shield him from the horrors of the Nest and those who were reared there. But Andrew was right, and there was no way to extract themselves from this situation now that Riko had caught whiff of Neil’s blood scent. Seth was likely just the beginning—a warning shot—and Neil needed to be prepared.

“It isn’t a game where I come from,” Kevin said quietly. “I know Riko was behind this. I know what people like him are like. Be glad you’ll never understand the way they think.”

Neil went completely still. He searched Kevin’s eyes for something, perhaps a hint of a lie. Kevin felt like Neil was on the verge of saying something, perhaps challenging what he said. The silence begged Kevin to say more, but he had already said too much.

Nicky interrupted at that point, waving them both over to come check out a pile of clothes he had collected for Neil. Neil made his protests but eventually gave in, Nicky’s persistence winning out. Thankfully, Nicky had good taste and selected a conservative wardrobe for Neil that would flatter Neil’s petite frame. Kevin wished he could thank Nicky without revealing his interest in Neil.

They finished paying and carried their bags down the escalators. The cousins had a designated meeting space at a large fountain in the centre of the mall. Aaron was nowhere to be seen, but they found Andrew waiting for them, perched with his legs crossed on top of a stone wall surrounding the water.

He was clicking away on an ancient looking grey flip phone, and once they got close Nicky started berating him on the choice. Something about a betting pot that Kevin hadn’t been invited to and therefore didn’t care about.

He only really started to pay attention once Andrew tossed the phone to Neil, and Neil went rigid. All colour drained from Neil’s face. There was a faraway look in his eyes. He wasn’t quite looking at the phone in his hands, but more _through_ it. It was just a phone. The reaction didn’t make sense, but then again not much about Neil seemed to make sense these days.

Nicky took a while to notice, but once Neil hadn’t replied to something he had asked he snapped his fingers in his face to wake him up.

“Neil?”

Neil shook out of whatever trance he had been in. He pushed the phone back into Nicky’s hands with trembling fingers. “No.”

Nicky’s exasperated sigh said he had been expecting some resistance. “Neil, we kind of need you to hold on to that. We need a way to get in touch with you this year.”

“You have this way of making people want to kill you.” Andrew grinned from his perch on the fountain.

“What if Coach needs to talk to you about something or Riko’s freaky fans start causing trouble? Last year got really crazy…”

Nicky kept talking but Kevin couldn’t hear him. He was back in March, putting his pen down after signing his contract as striker for the Foxes. He wondered if he would have still been signed if the university knew it was going to have windows smashed and graffiti tagged across campus buildings every week for the rest of the semester. Dan and Allison weren’t the only ones to come to practice with black eyes after fights started breaking out on the walk between classes. Nobody ever really knew why the mass brawls were starting until the school turned back the surveillance tapes and identified rogue Edgar Allan students amongst the mess.

Last year was rough but this one had started off with _Seth being murdered_. This was only the beginning. Riko would never stop at a warning pop of a joint, or the crack of a bone, he’d always twist twist _twist_ until he’d torn your limbs clean from your body.

A phone was useless, really. If a riot broke out, he wouldn’t be able to use it anyway. They couldn’t let Neil out of their sight. They had to keep him safe.

But he was walking off, Andrew’s car keys gripped in his fist.

Kevin started after him but fingers hooked into the back of his collar and reeled him back.

“Ah-ah, stay right there. We need to talk.” Andrew called from behind him. Kevin wrestled Andrew’s grip off of him, but by the time he was free, Neil had already disappeared into the crowd. Kevin’s gut twisted anxiously.

“Nicky, give me that.” Andrew held his hand out and Nicky obediently placed the phone in his palm. Andrew then shooed him off like a dog. “Go find Aaron and meet us at the car.”

Andrew pocketed the phone in his hoodie and waited until Nicky was out of earshot. Then he turned back to Kevin.

“Tell me. If I told you to get a tattoo, would you do it?”

The question came from so far out of left field that Kevin was lost. “Huh? No.”

“If I told you to hold still while I stomped on your playing hand, would you do it?”

Kevin went cold. Aaron had told Andrew after all.

“Andrew, wait—”

“Answer me. Would. You. Do. It.”

Kevin flinched. “No. Of course not—”

“Then why the fuck are you comparing me to Riko?”

Acidic helplessness and self pity finally hit the pit of his stomach. Andrew’s expectation for an answer was the catalyst that made it boil and spit until it bubbled up into red hot anger and frustration.

Kevin was a wild animal that had been beaten and crowded into a corner one too many times. He lashed out.

“Maybe because you’re intent on controlling every fucking aspect of my life.”

Kevin hated how Andrew’s eyes lit up. How his eyebrows raised in interest.

“Oh? That’s funny. I don’t remember speaking to you outside of practice for the past week. So tell me how I’ve been,” Andrew had the audacity to throw up air quotations, “ _controlling you._ ”

“You’ve been punishing me since—” _since he kissed Neil_ , but Kevin couldn’t say that out loud, not when they were standing in a crowded shopping mall and anyone could overhear them. “—since Eden’s. All because I didn’t fulfill your deal fast enough, or because you’re mad that you were wrong.”

Andrew gave him a blank look, “Punishing you is not the same as controlling you. I always gave you a choice. You behaved badly, so there were consequences.”

Kevin roiled. “Behaved badly? I’m not your fucking pet.”

“I told you not to get involved. I said I would handle it. You acted anyway, even though you made it clear you did not want to. I am not in the business of making people do things like that against their will, and fuck you if you ever thought otherwise.”

Kevin dropped to a low rumble, barely discernible above the murmur of the bustling shoppers around them. “And who are you to say I didn’t want to do it?”

He could have sworn he saw Andrew tremble.

“Do not lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you interested in Neil?”

Kevin felt hollow and nauseous at the same time. His brain was ticking into overtime, that little part that processes things too fast to create the sensation of deja vu telling him what he was about to do was a mistake, that he shouldn’t say anything at all. He knew there was only one way this confession could go, but the words were already in motion and he couldn’t take them back.

Considering he was confronting Andrew about being controlling, it was ironic that he was about to hand over the launch codes for the one truth bomb that could end his entire career.

“I am.” Kevin whispered.

Then he braced himself for the widened eyes, for the shocked expression, for the mocking jeers about his sexuality, for the doubt and suspicion that he was even telling the truth.

None of it came. Andrew didn’t even blink.

When he responded, it was the last thing Kevin ever thought he’d hear.

“And does he feel the same?”

Kevin was so dumbfounded by his reply that he could only stammer out an honest response, “I… I don’t know. I think so? He’s hard to read.”

Andrew stared at him, but not with disgust or contempt. If anything, he looked somewhat curious, and the angry rigidity that he’d been holding in his shoulders since catching them in Eden’s seemed to drip away. He drummed his fingers on his knee thoughtfully, considering something, before unfolding his legs and hopping down from the fountain wall.

“Congratulations. We’re reinstating your practices tonight.”

The change in direction hit Kevin like whiplash.

“Wait, what?”

“Did I fucking stutter?”

“No, but—” Kevin’s head span. “Why?”

Andrew looked up at him cooly, “I made a new deal with Neil. It has nothing to do with you, but lucky you, you benefit from it too. Aren’t you happy now?”

Honestly, Kevin was stunned. Andrew started to walk off, and he nearly lost him in the crowd before he remembered how to move his feet and follow after. He caught up to him and had to take a second to sort through the hundred questions running through his head. Why did Andrew take the reveal of his sexuality so calmly? Was it because Nicky’s sexuality didn’t bother him, or had he suspected this about Kevin all along? Why did he care about whether Neil returned his feelings?

Instead, all he could choke out was: “What’s your deal with him?”

Andrew busied himself with tapping a cigarette out while they made their way to the exit. He started lighting up before they even got outside.

“He came to me to ask why I ended your evening sessions. He wants to continue them. I offered him a trade: information for your dumb game.”

Kevin was surprised Andrew actually gave him an answer. Asking any more felt like it was pushing his luck. Catching sight of Nicky, Aaron and Neil waiting in the car five feet away stilled his line of questioning regardless.

“Thank you.” Kevin said.

Andrew blew out a plume of smoke and stubbed out his cigarette.

“I’m not doing it for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got a bit of a triangle on our hands!! Let me know in the comments on how you'd like to see this end ;)
> 
> BTW, for anyone wondering where the next update is: It's definitely coming! I have the next chapter half written, but I'm needing to put it on hold due to personal reasons. Thank you for your continued patience, your comments keep me thinking about this fic and I won't abandon you. This will have an end <3


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